I’m briefly on an NPR Marketplace segment about the 4-day week.
A shortened workweek could become more common in industries where competition for talent is intense, said Alex Pang, author of the book “Shorter: Work Better, Smarter and Less — Here’s How.”
“Time is going to be the new catered lunch, or, you know, in-house masseur,” he said.
Gotta workshop that a bit— “the new on-site dry cleaning and craft beer,” maybe.
More seriously, I notice on thing about how the piece is structured that’s interesting and hopeful:
But, like those luxuries, it could become one more benefit for the privileged of the workforce, said Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“If you see a situation where white-collar workers have all this flexibility they can do, their family could do other things. Whereas blue-collar workers are stuck five days a week, eight hours a day — it’s already bad, but you don’t want to see that get worse,” he said.
A couple years ago, the skeptical voices would have taken the position that “This will never ever work, never never never;” now, the worries are that it will spread unevenly, not that it will be the Death of Capitalism (though you still see a bit of that in places like Linkedin comments). The center of the conversation around the 4-day week has shifted a lot in the last 18 months, and has moved in a good direction.