- Hey y'all, Myles Bess here, journalist, host of Above the Noise, and a dude who is desperate for some free time.

My job is a standard 40 hours per week, and if I'm being honest, I'm tired.

And if you're still and school and haven't hit the workforce yet, don't worry, there'll be a time sucking job out there for you.

So I'm all about the news dropping that some companies are permanently adopting a 32 hour, four day work week without reducing pay.

And plenty of companies are skeptical.

Their argument is if you work less hours, and you get paid the same then productivity will slip, which means we'll make less money, or worse, that the whole economy could suffer.

Oh no, help me, I'm the economy.

So today we're asking, should the four day work week become the new normal?

It may seem like a 40 hour work week is carved in stone somewhere, but it's not.

Trust me, I checked.

It's just that it's been the norm for so long.

It's easy to forget it wasn't always like this.

Kind of like when hipsters were doing that ironic mullet thing.

They felt it was the only way to live, but it's not.

Trust me, I checked.

In fact, the 40 hour work week that we roll our eyes at today was a hard fought victory.

Let's rewind back to the industrial revolution, a time when wealthy business tycoons who, not always but often, forced their employees to pull off 12 plus hour days six days a week.

Compared to what those workers endured, we're all just a bunch of slackers.

Who knew coal miners were the Kim Kardashians of the 1800s.

- Get your up and work.

- Now we can all agree that working 12 hour days is a terrible idea, so you can imagine workers back then weren't in stance of this arrangement, which is what led to the labor movement.

I'm talking like huge protests, major strikes.

By the 1880s, the slogan on everyone's lips, eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will.

No wonder we work so much.

We went from slogans like that to live, laugh, love, dance like no one's watching, fee fi fo fuhgeddaboudit.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford became frustrated with what he was seeing on his assembly lines.

After shifts hit eight hours, productivity dropped because duh, people would get tired and make more mistakes.

So what did old Ford do about that?

He went ahead and shocked the world by shortening the work week for his assembly line employees down to 40 hours a week.

Critics at the time were like what, no way you'll be able to keep pushing out model T's at the same pace forward.

And Ford was like oh no help, it's me the economy.

And when the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, the US government saw Ford's shorter work week as a way to fight the massive unemployment crisis.

Companies would need to hire more workers to get the job done.

And by 1940, a series of laws made the 40 hour work week the norm in the US, and it's been that way ever since.

Now, before you go thinking Ford was this inspirational working class hero, know this.

He thought labor unions were part of a sinister global Jewish conspiracy.

Henry Ford, great with cars, not so great with Jews.

And the 1940s were so long ago, maybe it's time we re-looked at the eight hour five day a week work model.

Back then people would say things like jalopy or bee's knees, or hey, take a look at that dame's gams.

Fun fact, that's what my basketball teammates used to say to me.

And if we go back in time even further, you'll find societies functioning with even shorter work weeks.

I'm talking way back, no, I'm talking way back.

Even further, okay, too far.

Oh no, I said too far.

Okay, I don't even know what that means.

Guys, all right, I'm talking thousands of years ago.

Turns out our distant hunter gatherer ancestors worked less than we do now, and those dudes had to catch their food.

One anthropologist studied the Ju/'hoansi, a society descended from a continuous line of hunter gatherers who have been living largely isolated in southern Africa since the dawn of our species, and they rarely work more than 15 hours a week.

Yes, your heard that right.

15 hours a week.

I don't get anything done in 15 hours.

I can barely Grubhub dinner without dumplings, tacos, tacos, dumplings.

And the Ju/'hoansi still live like this, which is pretty cool to think about even though most of us aren't about that #hunter gatherer life.

I know I'm not.

Blood makes me squeamish.

So maybe reducing the standard work week down to 32 hours isn't such a zany idea even though I love to work.

I love to work work work work work work work.

You know who else was a fan of the 32 hour work week?

My boy, Richard Nixon.

I'm not a crook, take your lunch break.

Back when he was vice president in 1956, he predicted that in the not too distant future most Americans will be working a four day work week.

Why did he think this?

Because he was a genius.

- [Narrator] Richard Nixon was a controversial figure and we neither support nor negate his stance.

- In the '50s and '60s, the economy was looking real nice for workers unless you were black, Hispanic, gay, but I digress.

Peep this graph.

From 1948 to 1979, productivity and pay increased at pretty much the same rate.

Meaning as workers were more productive, they got rewarded with more money.

That's why maybe you've seen memes about boomers buying homes at 21 years old from their jobs, mowing lawns, part time.

And this is why gen-Z and millennials, myself included, get frustrated when that generation says you can do the same if you just stop spending all your money on a pair of Jordans.

Well, guess what, I'm not stopping, okay.

I might be broke, but I'm cute.

Damn, I'm really broke.

But now, in 2022, landing a well paying job is super competitive.

College is insanely expensive.

And buy a house, with all four walls?

Oh child, I'll be lucky If I still don't have three roommates by the time I'm 65.

Pass me that Jello baby.

So how did this happen?

Back to the graph.

From 1979 to 2020, the productivity of the typical US worker increased 62%, but the average pay only increased 17%.

That whole pay increasing along with productivity thing, yeah it just stopped happening.

Companies were making more and more profit but they weren't sharing it with most of their employees.

So where are the profits going?

Basically two places, the salaries of people who are already in the top 20%, and then shareholders who make money from owning company stock.

My takeaway, if I'm not seeing the benefit to all this increased productivity, what motivation do I have to keep putting in 40 hours a week?

And that my friends takes us to Iceland.

Their government decided to conduct a country-wide experiment to answer the question what would happen if people worked fewer hours for the same pay?

From 2015 to 2019, a little over one percent of the working population had their hours reduced from 40 hours a week to around 36 hours with no reduction in pay.

Not exactly a four day work week, but close.

And it was a good mix of different jobs in the public sector.

Government jobs, childcare jobs, police, healthcare jobs, all types of stuff.

Let's meet Jack Kellam, one of the co-authors of the research paper that crunched the Iceland data.

- Reducing working time not only made people feel more relaxed, but also that they were often better at the work they were doing throughout it.

They were able to make themselves more efficient so that they could do the same amount of work but with less people.

Because when they arrived at work people were more productive, they were better rested, they were healthier, they were happier.

- And that right there is key.

Shortening the work week isn't just about maintaining productivity, it's about creating happier and healthier lives for people which is something we've been seeing with Gen Z, y'all have been pushing the culture in that direction.

Not all companies are created equal, but neither are all employees.

Would it be so crazy if we supported and promoted individual work styles?

And something else gen Z is killing the game in, fighting the climate crisis.

Which is something Jack also brought up.

A shorter work week would not only mean working less, but that also means less electricity, less commuting, which means less gas, less fossil fuels, and less carbon emissions.

Less, less, less, less.

A shorter work week is not a one size fits all solution, what works in Iceland might now work over here in the US.

Remember, one percent of the working population there got a shorter work week.

That's a little over 2500 people, there's like 2500 people stuck on the Bay Bridge right now.

And over 90% of workers in Iceland are a part of a union, which means they can band together to bargain for higher wages, or shorter work weeks.

In the US, only around 10% of workers are in unions.

And if you're in school and still haven't hit the workforce yet, don't worry, there will be a time sucking job with no union out there for you.

Here in the US, tech companies have been ground zero for experimenting with the shorter work weeks.

Bolt is one of the more high profile ones that switched to a 32 hour work week.

With the CEO at the time describing the mindset you need to have as work like a lion, not a cow.

The idea being you gotta be super intense and focused instead of grazing your way through the workday.

But not every worker is a lion, and not every lion is a worker.

You know what I'm saying bro?

When employees were surveyed about the four day work week 40% reported feeling more stressed than they were working a five day week.

Also, not a great sign that Bolt just laid off almost a third of its workforce.

All of this to say, a four day work week doesn't automatically guarantee that you'll get a super productive company, or that all your animal metaphors will work out.

Now up to this point, all this four day work week stuff in the US has been pretty much voluntary, but California's gonna California.

Democrats in the state legislature have introduced a bill that would redefine the state's work week as 32 hours instead of 40 hours for companies with 500 or more employees.

Essentially forcing them to adopt a shortened work week.

Forcing Americans to do something?

What could go wrong?

Pass me that Jello baby.

So yeah, the bill is stalled and has pretty much zero chance of actually passing.

And some economists think that requiring businesses to pay the same amount of money for one less day of work could actually kill jobs in the state.

See if the bill passed, companies would have to start paying hourly workers overtime pay after they hit 32 hours, and overtime is one and a half times your hourly wage, meaning these companies would have to start paying employees more money which means less money would be available for raises and promotions, and could also push the companies to shift jobs to a different state that still has a 40 hour work week.

That's why the California Chamber of Commerce added the bill to its job killer list, which by the way, is a terrifying name for a list.

So there you have it.

The 40 hour work week, the one week to rule them all.

A lot of it works, a lot of it, well, doesn't.

And it's complicated to say the least.

All I know is right now what we have isn't functioning as smoothly as our government, and our employers want us to think it is.

So what do y'all think?

Do you want the four day work week to become the new normal?

Let me know.