Introducing a Different Type of 32-Hour Workweek Act

by Daniel Wortel-London

Working long hours? You aren’t alone.  Forty-one percent of U.S. workers reported working more than 45 hours a week in 2021. Sixteen percent said they spent more than 60 hours per week at work. Working long hours has been shown to degrade quality of life and productivity. But there’s a bigger problem with full-time employment: It isn’t environmentally sustainable.

Additional economic growth is the only way to generate full-time employment. That means ecological limits to growth apply to employment. Moreover, the additional income generated through long work hours is an index of our increasing environmental impact.

Redistributing existing full-time employment opportunities, however, could enable some of today’s work to be done by more people while increasing leisure time and reducing ecological impact. One way of spreading out existing work is to reduce work hours.

CASSE’s principal contribution to this effort is the “32-Hour Workweek Act” (32HWA). Not your standard workweek reduction attempt, 32HWA would gradually reduce the workweek only for occupations with a high median salary in the United States until it reaches 32 hours.

Read on to learn why.

Growth Trap

Many assume that economic growth creates jobs. It would be more accurate to say that economic growth forces us to create jobs. Here’s why: Increasing labor productivity and efficiency tends to generate economic growth as firms have more goods to sell. But it also means firms need  fewer workers to produce the same output, thus threatening to raise unemployment. To head off efficiency-induced unemployment, the economy must grow in order to employ more full-time workers.

Full-time jobs involve more hours than they used to, with the average American worker spending 43.1 hours of work at their main job. Long hours lead to greater physical and mental strain, which increases health care costs by an estimated $13 billion annually.

Long hours of work are also bad for the environment. The economic activity generated by full-time jobs, no matter how “immaterial” it appears to be, is connected to extractive and agricultural activity in the “trophic base” of our economy.  The more full-time jobs we have, therefore, the more environmental impact we have. It follows that just as the environment places limits on the scale of economic activity, so the environment places limits on full-time employment. Indeed, we’ve long since breached these limits. Now, rather than increase production and consumption in the aggregate, we need to produce and consume less. But this would mean less employment. What can policymakers do?

Reducing Work Hours

Reducing work hours to spread employment opportunities isn’t a new idea. During the Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt encouraged employers to sign the President’s Reemployment Agreement limiting workweeks to 35 hours. And by early 1933, nearly 80 percent of employers had implemented some form of reduced work hours.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the standard workweek at 44 hours. This was reduced in 1940 to 40 hours. And since the 2008–09 Great Recession, proposals for a reduced workweek have grown in number and support. Recent polls show that two-thirds of Americans are in favor of a four-day workweek, with a majority of Democratic and Republican voters supporting it.

Studies of the four-day workweek suggest it would provide a range of benefits. After 250 British firms adopted a four-day workweek on a trial basis, two-thirds reported that their employees were more productive, happier, and healthier. Indeed, 90 percent of British companies involved in a six-month, four-day workweek trial chose to continue with the policy after the trial was complete.

Many studies also suggest environmental benefits. The city of Valencia, Spain reduced its nitrogen dioxide emissions by 58 percent over the course of a four-day workweek trial. A similar workweek reduction for public employees in Utah led to a two percent reduction in fuel consumption and a 14 percent reduction in CO2 emissions.

For all these reasons, a growing number of advocates are pressing for public policies that could make a 32-hour workweek the law of the land. Municipal governments from Texas to Connecticut are providing four-day workweeks for public employees. Legislators in Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey are considering pilot programs providing tax credits to private firms with 32-hour workweeks. Most dramatically, in 2000 France reduced the standard workweek for public and private workers in the country from 39 to 35 hours.

CASSE’s approach to a reduced workweek, however, differs from these models because it is informed by ecological macroeconomics. The goal of CASSE legislation is not only to reduce hours for the purpose of wellbeing, but to reduce economic growth. This means reducing both the number of full-time work hours and the salaries associated with them. In other words, CASSE wants to reduce work hours and to reduce compensation correspondingly. This would be both feasible and just for those making high salaries, like lawyers and executives.

What about entry-level, blue collar, and service industry wage earners who must work 40 hours to make ends meet? What about young workers? They are just beginning to build a financial foundation and workplace experience. And they can advance to a shorter workweek across the rest of their lives. CASSE recognizes their need to keep the current, 40-hour workweek. We apply our reduced-hour bill only to wage earners making more than the average annual wage in the United States and who have already built an adequate financial nest. In this way, the 32-Hour Workweek Act will help ensure full employment nationally, improve quality of life, and reduce the economy’s environmental impact.

32-Hour Workweek Act

The 32HWA aims to reduce the workweek of employees in the United States to 32 hours. Its first major provision stipulates that no employer shall employ anyone for more than 38 hours starting 180 days after the bill’s enactment. It then mandates two hours’ additional reduction per week each subsequent year until the workweek is 32 hours long.

The second provision specifies who this Act shall apply to. As the median annual wage in the United States was $48,070 in 2023, this Act shall apply a reduced week only to occupational groupings whose median annual salary exceeds this number by a quarter, or $60,087. Teachers, cashiers, and machinists—to name a few occupations—will not have their work hours affected by this Act. Chief executives, financial planners, and lawyers, on the other hand, will. This provision will ensure that less-compensated workers will be able to maintain their previous earning levels, while still reducing the proportionately higher incomes of other occupations.

The third major provision addresses overtime. No employer shall employ a worker for more than 32 hours a week unless they receive compensation of at least one-and-a-half times their regular pay. The legislation calls for a similar overtime arrangement regarding individual days of work. Employees working more than eight hours shall be paid time-and-a-half. For more than 12 hours in a day, overtime pay is twice the standard rate.

The final section of the bill contains penalties for noncompliance. Employers shall be liable to pay employees unpaid wages or overtime compensation, and an equal amount in liquidated damages (damages to workers who were not paid on time).

The 32HWA is one of a few pillars of CASSE’s overarching labor policy. Job guarantees and basic income policies will also be necessary to address inflation and unemployment in a steady state economy. Similarly, caps on natural resource extraction and emissions will be necessary to prevent full employment policies from eroding our environment. Nevertheless, the 32-hour workweek is a vital component of any policy program aiming to create a sustainable economy.

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Daniel Wortel-London is a CASSE Policy Specialist focused on steady-state policy development.