The Case for Axing the 9 to 5

     Finishing out our Senior Fall STEAM class economics, each of my classmates and I had to come up with a concept for a chapter of a book. Specifically, an eighth chapter of Doughnut Economics, a book by economist Kate Raworth which we have been reading for Unit 2. Leading up to the project, we did some group reading of the book, and worked with a partner to learn about a specific chapter then make a poster on it and lead the class through an activity related to it. Afterwards, we came up with a concept for our chapters and wrote introductions, along with designs conveying our ideas and explanations with our reasoning behind our topics. 

Axing the 9 to 5

John Maynard Keynes wrote the paper Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren in 1930 and asserted that in a century's time people would be working 3 hour shifts and 15 hour workweeks. At the surface this prediction by and large hasn’t come to fruition, but looking closer, it isn’t that simple. The average full time employee in the UK is working over double Keynes’ prediction at 36 hours weekly, but over a third of British adults say they do not think their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world. Anthropologist David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics until his death in 2020, coined the term “bullshit jobs” as a catchall for jobs that are overstaffed and/or unnecessary. He made the case that while we would be on track to achieve this goal, jobs without clear purposes are made up to keep people busy. Job creation is looked at as an inherent positive without looking at whether these jobs are completing necessary functions. According to the March 2006 Monthly Labor Review, over the course of the 20th century jobs in clerical and managerial fields tripled while labor type jobs fell dramatically. This is all to suggest that the goal of a 15 hour work week is within reach, if only we cut through to determine what work is necessary.

Discussion

    As mentioned in the introduction, jobs have dramatically shifted away from farming and other manual labor requiring jobs in the last century. Interestingly, this coincides with a shift in how value has been measured. In an interview with ThoughtEconomics, Kate Raworth explains that "The measurement of GDP goes back to 1930s America. Until the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the economy had been measured in tonnes of grain and steel." This is consistent with the timing of John Maynard Keynes' prediction of reduced time laboring, and the shift towards automation in industrial jobs. With corporations no longer incentivized to provide the most product in physical terms, they had to find other ways to create financial value in automated fields. Keynes was right in saying automation would reduce labor time, but failed to predict that extra tasks could be made up to fill what would otherwise be free time. Without suggesting everyone quit their jobs, a moderation could be reached by reducing unnecessary time working while still fulfilling necessary tasks, mirroring the moderation of the doughnut for individuals work schedules. 

Works Cited

Dahlgreen, Will. “37% Of British Workers Think Their Jobs Are Meaningless.” YouGov, YouGov, 12 Aug. 2015, https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningless.

Graeber, David. “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” The Anarchist Library, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-a-work-rant.

Heller, Nathan. “The Bullshit-Job Boom.” The New Yorker, 7 June 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-bullshit-job-boom.

Keynes, John Maynard. “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” 1930, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-59072-8_25.

Shah, Vikas. “A Conversation with Kate Raworth on Doughnut Economics and Redesigning Our Economy.” Thought Economics, Thought Economics, 3 Dec. 2021, https://thoughteconomics.com/kate-raworth/.

Wyatt, Ian D., and Daniel E. Hecker. Occupational Changes during the 20th Century - Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2006/03/art3full.pdf.