Dusseldorf The latest surveys show that the four-day week is widely accepted among employees in Germany. At the same time, studies and pilot projects suggest that people who only work four days a week are happier and healthier.
Much more controversial, however, is the question of whether you can be just as productive on four days as on five and what the consequences would be from an economic point of view. Is the four-day week a model for the future or a productivity killer? Holger Schäfer from the German Economic Institute (IW) and Sophie Jänicke from IG Metall discussed this in the podcast.
“If we collectively reduce working hours by a fifth, then we would need an increase in hourly productivity by a quarter to compensate for this,” says Schäfer. It is utopian to assume that “we have a 25 percent productivity reserve that we can activate overnight”. Jänicke replies: “The length of the individual working hours plays a minor role in the question of productivity.”
Jan Hildebrand, deputy head of the Handelsblatt capital city office, also explains why a budget trick by the traffic light coalition is now being negotiated before the Federal Constitutional Court.
More: Comment – A four-day week is popular but unrealistic
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