Unemployment and a shorter work week.

Economists often talk about unemployment and job growth rates. As we have things set up presently unemployment is a big issue. People's lives get devastated when they lose a job, suicide rates go up, domestic violence increases, unemployment is stressful and from that comes worse physical and mental health. But is this how we have to have things set up?

Let's look at what a job is. Jobs bring with them both positive and negative elements. Some people get to work, they have a dream job, it's what they want to do every day. Other people have to work, some people have to take any job there offered, others persist for years in a job they don't like. I could go on for quite a bit about the negative aspects of work, the alienation, the stress, the drudgery, the exploitation and oppression that can be found in the workplace. That's not the focus of what I'm writing about at the moment.

There are basically three positive aspects of a job. For the individual a job brings income, and meaning. For society or at least the employer, jobs are about productivity, making something or providing a service. For the economist the focus on jobs is about productivity and income. The importance of income may be predicated on the importance of productivity. I will start by discussing productivity and then employment, work as a source of meaning is a very important issue, perhaps the most important issue that we face regarding jobs, but the economists framework should be laid out first. I will take up meaning in a future posts.

Productivity refers to how much one person can get done.  As the productivity of workers goes up this is seen as good for the economy, the economy is more competitive. And all things being equal businesses can make more money. Increased production is how we measure the wealth of the society, and it generally equates increased profits for the business. 

 Unemployment is seen in a negative light because without a job one has less income to spend, and spending is also seen as good for the economy because when you spend you are consuming something that has to be produced. We can add the point that unwanted unemployment is bad for the individual who is unemployed, but this really doesn't seem to be the concern of economists. There are exceptions and for some economists caring about human beings appears to be their central concern. 

Productivity has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. As productivity continues to go up any one person can make more or provide more services than a similar person could have any time in the past. It looks to me like there is an obvious problem here. If society needs a certain amount of something and half the workers are needed to produce that that were needed 50 years ago then the other half would be unemployed. We have solutions to this problem of course, new products and increased consumption. 

At first that doesn't sound so bad. For economists this is how we measure the success of our society, but let's look at it more closely. Once you are well fed more food amounts to obesity and the many health problems that go with it. The increased productivity in everything from housing to cars to consumer goods may make these things readily available but in the process may be helping to destroy the earth.

I'm not saying there's nothing we should be producing more of, I'm all in favor of windmills and solar panels and experiments in algae diesel. Nonetheless in spite of exponential growth in these green areas of the economy the only dip we have seen in carbon emissions since the Kyoto protocol has been due to the global recession in 2008. 

The point is that generally speaking productivity is exceeding our needs. Any economist can tell you that excess production eventually leads to a downturn in the economy. The standard way of downturn takes shape is that people are laid off until inventories are lower.

There is another way that excess productivity could be dealt with. All of us could work less. I'm in favor of the six-hour workday, or the four day work week and as productivity continues to climb our time spent working should be shortened even further. The eight hour work day had become a general standard by the mid-1930s. With productivity more than doubling why can't we work less?

A shorter work week doesn't have to amount to less pay. A strong union movement would be able to win equal pay for less hours. Since we don't have a strong union movement it could come through federal legislation or funding. Since we don't have a worker friendly political system I suppose this isn't likely either. But as they say, power concedes nothing without a struggle, if you don't ask for it you're never going to get it.