Technology and automation has led to much greater efficiencies and output for every human in the workforce over the last 50 years. How come this hasn’t led globally to less working hours or a shorter work week for the average worker?

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EDIT: Replace ‘every human in the workforce’ with ‘most people’. I agree efficiency has not been gained equally across all professions.

In: Economics

36 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m not sure if there’s a way to answer this question without politicizing it to some extent.

Basically, business leaders didn’t see the gains in efficiency as an opportunity to reduce hours for their workers. They saw it as an opportunity to make more stuff for less money and thus make more profit.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Demand is infinite. As we become more efficient at delivering the supply it doesn’t lighten the load or get us closer to the finish line, hence no slow down. This positive feedback loop in the supply demand model is one of the things that makes capitalism so powerful at first and ultimately unsustainable

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because rather than hire two people to work 20 hours a week they hire one to work 40.

And because they pay D dollars before automation and advancements and also D dollars after no one could live off 20 hours a week of pay anyway.

It does increase production rates of the company which leads to bigger and more profitable contracts but that just translates to a more profitable business for the owners.

The rich get richer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Globally we are not there.

While automation can lead to more efficiencies it doesn’t mean there’s less work to go around. In most cases it just makes the human more efficient allowing them to do more with their time and at the same time employers can hire fewer workers working the same hours to do a particular job.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It has led to that.
There are over six-million part time workers in the US that want to be full time, but the hours are not available. In other words they do have less working hours and a shorter work week.
The utopian idea that a worker would have reduced work time and still make the same amount of money is not grounded in even the most simple economic principles.
Technology has advanced efficiency, that means that a industry needs fewer workers and needs them for less time or it means they can use the same workforce to make more of their product over the same time period.
Given the choice, if the market allows, most companies will choose to work their people the same time and make more money.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s mainly due to the population increasing and more people having access to more advanced technologies with the improvements not meeting/exceeding the increased demand.

The world population has more than doubled since 1970 to now. In 1970, there were 3.7 billion people whilst in 2020 there was an estimated 7.8 billion people. This increases the demand of products and services.

Also, the vast majority of the extra population are from poor countries which through the development of the country means more people can afford the new and better items. So that could mean in 1970 only 30% could obtain it but through development in the country there could be 50% of people who can afford them (these are random figures).

Anonymous 0 Comments

We make things more efficiently but we also want more. An average home in the 50s had maybe 1 television, average homes now have 2-3. We have access to computers, phones, foods, textiles and more that weren’t available before.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One could argue that there is indeed less work to go around now than there used to be. The big labor problem in the first few millennia of civilization was finding enough people to do all the work. This was mostly because that work was grueling agricultural labor where one person could barely support themselves, let alone support a class of people who didn’t participate in that labor. It’s only been in the last century that the big labor problem was instead finding enough work for all the people.

And there are a few reasons why people still want to work a lot even though civilization could probably survive if they worked less. First, work is an intrinsic good for some people. It makes them feel engaged, productive, and/or fulfilled. Some people work until they die. Others “retire” but continue to do volunteer work. Second, work is still the main way to access the things we need to survive/thrive. Not everyone starts life with generational wealth, but everyone starts life with time. They can sell some of their time as work and so have money to buy the stuff they want. In a society without work, someone with only time to offer will be quite poor.

It’s possible to build a post-work society where everybody shares in the wealth. This is the main idea behind current programs like food stamps and social security and proposed future programs like birth trusts and universal basic income. The transition from here to there will be messy because we’ll have to constantly keep track of how much work actually needs doing and calibrate the programs as necessary. We’ll also have to get past ancient ideas of societal fairness if we’re ever going to get to a place where some people can forego work without stigma.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because each of us makes the trade-off that we want a higher standard of living, within a reasonable cost in terms of hours worked. We seem to be willing to work 25% to 35% of our time (40 to 55 hours per week), and we’ll keep doing so no matter how high our standard of living gets.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your question is very biaised and assume we are not working less, yet we actually are.

I have some numbers but they are part of a french study made by the official statistics organisation (insee) so you may have some trouble reading them. If you just want the chart, scroll down to “Tableau 1”. You can probably find the numbers yourself pretty easily too, i doubt this data is hidden.

As far as France goes, we used to work 45-46h/week 50 years ago, and now it is 35. We also went from 2 to 5 weeks of paid leave per year between 1950 and today.

The graph also shows a global decrease of 25% of the time of work in the USA from 1950 to 2007, and the trend has not changed since.

Source here:

[https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1281175](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1281175)