Working Paper: NBER ID: w30106
Authors: Daniel S. Hamermesh; Jeff Biddle
Abstract: We examine patterns of work in the U.S. from 1973-2018 with the novel focus on days per week, using intermittent CPS samples and one ATUS sample. Among full-time workers the incidence of four-day work tripled during this period, with over 8 million more full-time workers on four-day weeks. The same growth occurred in the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea. The rise was not due to changes in demographics or industrial structure. Four-day full-time work is more common among less educated, younger, and white non-Hispanic workers, among men, natives, and people with young children; and among police and firefighters, health-care workers, and in eating/drinking places. Based on an equilibrium model of its prevalence, we show that it results more from workers’ preferences and/or daily fixed costs of working than from employers' production costs. We verify the implication that the wage penalty for four-day work is greater where such work is more prevalent, and we show that the penalty has diminished over time.
Keywords: four-day workweek; labor supply; work patterns
JEL Codes: J11; J22
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| year (1973-2018) (Y10) | number of full-time workers on four-day weeks (J22) |
| incidence of four-day work (J22) | wage penalty (J31) |
| incidence of four-day work (J22) | demographic sorting effect (J11) |
| incidence of four-day work (J22) | wage penalty diminishing over time (J31) |