In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, often called the “father of macroeconomics,” predicted that in the next century, people’s increased ability to meet their basic needs would lower the average work week to 15 hours. He could not have been more wrong. Although Americans today work relatively fewer hours than their parents did, they still work hundreds of hours more per day than adults in other developed countries.
The computer and internet boom of the 1990s was followed by increased consumer spending, not by people opting for more leisure. Efficiency improvements, which could have been used to improve quality of life, were used to increase economic growth. This trend of overworking to meet perceived consumption needs contributes to the range of issues correlated with working long hours, including alcoholism, depression and heart disease.
Artificial intelligence promises to bring the next great productivity boom to the world. It also gives governments and societies another chance to rethink the relationship between economic growth and quality of life. While AI will increase the productive capacity of the U.S. labor force, it can be an incredibly powerful tool to offer overworked Americans more time to prioritize nonwork aspects of life that make them happy.
The push toward more leisure time can happen at all levels of society. On the individual level, enterprising students were among the first groups to realize the leisure-creating power of AI, using chatbots like ChatGPT to assist with brainstorming, researching, editing and other school-related tasks. Workers can do the same, using AI to automate boring and repetitive low-skill tasks that don’t require thinking, cutting down on time spent working. In fact, generative AI can improve a worker’s performance by up to 40%. According to Christopher Pissarides, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, this would also allow people to focus on interesting and creative tasks, resulting in higher work satisfaction, a metric highly correlated to happiness.
Workers should benefit from AI’s advancements in productivity, and employers should not try to squeeze every last hour of work out of their employees. Shortening the workweek would be one effective method of giving Americans more time for leisure.
Numerous countries and companies have already experimented with shortened work weeks and found it highly effective. In 2022, the nonprofit organization 4 Day Week Global and researchers at Boston College, University College Dublin and Cambridge University assessed an international trial of 33 companies experimenting with four-day, 32-hour work weeks. On a scale of one to 10, with one being very negative and 10 being very positive, the 27 companies that responded to the end-of-trial survey rated the reduced-hours system as a nine.
Employees were similarly happy with the results: 97% wanted to continue with the trial. Perceived productivity increased, too, going from a pretrial baseline of 7.17 to 7.83. Most importantly, employees on reduced hours showed improvement in wellness metrics such as mental health, fatigue and life satisfaction, and they used their extra day off for hobbies, house work or personal care.
A similar experiment was conducted by Microsoft Japan in summer 2019, during which employees worked four days per week and earned their normal five-day paycheck. The company reported a 40% increase in productivity and became more efficient in other areas, including reducing electricity costs, which fell by 23%. Other changes, such as streamlined meetings and the use of collaborative chat rooms, also contributed to this boost in productivity.
If the potential gain in productivity from AI turns out as predicted, the resulting boost in GDP will make America richer than ever. The wealth generated by this technology should contribute to redistribution programs that give Americans equal and increased access to essential services like health care, education and child care services. Assisting people in meeting these basic needs would further incentivize people to trade work for leisure and improve their quality of life.
One of the most commonly cited concerns of AI’s use as a productivity tool is its ability to displace middle-class workers in automatable jobs, such as data entry, telemarketing and cashiering. A study done by McKinsey & Company estimated that 30% of hours worked today could be automated by 2030, with office support being the most affected sector. Economic researchers at Goldman Sachs estimated that globally, generative AI could expose up to 300 million jobs to automation.
While these numbers may seem daunting, it’s important to avoid adopting a fearmonger’s perspective. In the past, structural shifts from new technology in the labor market have been followed by the creation of new jobs, ultimately increasing employment rather than decreasing it. New AI can actually be a force for equality, boosting the middle class by giving uneducated workers the biggest individual gains in productivity, instead of just highly educated college graduates. Many economists envision an economy in which a broad range of people will have the ability to do what is currently only being done by the most talented and specialized members of society. If we use AI correctly, it can not only give us more leisure time, but allow us all to do more intellectually stimulating and complex work.
The AI revolution gives us the opportunity to rethink our relationship with work. By collectively opting to leverage productivity gains to increase leisure time, we can boost economic growth and personal well-being.
Ethan Bittner is an Opinion Columnist studying economics. He writes about American culture and the global climate crisis. Ethan can be reached at ebittner@umich.edu.