Timesizing®

• By letting the work week vary with the unemployment rate
• By replacing overtime with training, in areas with labor or skill shortages
• By facilitating work sharing programs

The US work week has been stuck at 40 hours since 1940. That’s MORE THAN 70 YEARS of an unchanged work week. Since 1940, computers, robots, technology, and outsourcing have chipped away at American jobs. A growing population has increased competition for the remaining jobs.

Shorter hours are happening anyway, but not the best way which maintains personal income and vital consumer spending via emergency worksharing and sustainable timesizing. We can’t simply project a pre-computer 40-hour workweek indefinitely into the age of robotics.

It may be fun to sneer at believers in the fixed “lump of labor fallacy” because “there’s an infinite amount of work to be done,” but where’s the corresponding willingness to pay for it? – and without pay, it isn’t, and doesn’t, work.