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?

Question

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

In: Economics

Answer 1

Because the average worker still has to pay the bills and feed his family.

Imagine being a boss, you own something simple like a banana stand. You hire a person to work 40 hours a week, along side you. You are running the register and dealing with customers, while your employee is making the banana orders. All fine and dandy.

So one year you decide to invest $500,000 in a banana robot to do most of that person’s job. In fact you only need that person for an hour a day, to get the robot prepped.

So now you only need your employee for 5 hours a week instead of 40. So are you going to keep paying him for 40 hours of work per week? No. The entire point of your automation investment was to eliminate man labor hours.

So that investment helps YOU, the business owner. It doesn’t help the employee.