AI has already boosted productivity — an AI industry leader argues it’s time the gains came back to workers in the form of an extra day off.
The next era of productivity gains is staring us in the face: a four-day workweek. The advent of AI is the last piece in that puzzle, and I’d go further. The AI industry’s success should be measured by its ability to enable other industries to make this change a reality. That shift means healthier people, companies that maintain their output, and money moving back through an economy where workers finally have the time to spend it.
The evidence of a four-day workweek’s success has been sitting there for years. Microsoft Japan closed its offices every Friday for a month in 2019, and sales per employee rose almost 40%. The UK ran the largest structured trial to date in 2022: 61 companies, close to 2,900 employees; 92% kept the four-day workweek going after the trial ended; and revenue held steady, up 1.4% on average during the trial. Iceland’s trials ran from 2015 to 2019, and almost 90% of its workforce has since moved to shorter hours or won the right to request them, with productivity holding steady. In other words, AI has removed the last excuse for not doing what we already know works.
Why does this matter?Â
Ask most workers what they think the AI industry is doing, and they worry about their jobs and livelihoods. Anyone can understand that sentiment when this industry advertises itself as replacing humans, only to wonder why nobody outside it is cheering. Communities across the US are pushing back on data center buildouts the same way they once organized against pipelines, and AI has been cited as the reason for layoffs for four straight months this year, part of more than 100,000 job cuts attributed to it since January. If what we do isn’t seen as a benefit to everyone, then I’d say it’s a benefit to no one. A rising tide lifts all boats, not just those with yachts.
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Rather than claiming it can replace people, the AI industry should be genuinely improving their lives. A four-day workweek is the most tangible improvement we can point to and say, without hedging, is good for society. If AI cannot deliver even one extra day off, what was the point? We, as AI industry leaders, are on the hook for that answer.
An industry causing this much disruption everywhere else doesn’t get to be first in line for the relief, particularly when we’re the sector posting record revenue and record profits while carrying a large share of the stock market. AI is already pushing productivity up. Industries that reclaim that time should see gains compound because happier workers produce more. We won’t win friends by disrupting the relationship between workers and their jobs without giving them something in return. When the rest of the world has a 4-day workweek to appreciate, maybe the AI industry can join too.
Some executives will read this and still reach the wrong conclusion: use AI to squeeze more out of five days instead of turning it into four. I’d think twice, as there’s an opportunity cost here that may hit your bottom line. Banking a few more percent of output this quarter is penny-wise and pound-foolish, because the bigger prize is sitting right next to it: a workforce that isn’t running on empty, and customers who can still afford what you sell. Only about one in five workers worldwide is engaged at work; disengagement costs the global economy trillions a year; and the US birth rate just hit a record low, with plenty of people quietly deciding that a career and a family don’t both fit within the hours available. A six-month study of British call-center staff found workers were 13% more productive when happier, the first causal field evidence for what every good manager already suspected. Give the time back and you get people who are more productive and come back with better ideas.
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For an industry that is purportedly all about being future-oriented, we certainly aren’t changing the future for the better as much as we expected. Leaders are supposed to bring about good change and I have the numbers to back the benefits of a four-day workweek.
Consumer spending is roughly 69% of the US economy. Suppress hiring, hold wages flat, leave people no time to spend what they earn, and you get what consumers already say they plan to do: pull back across nearly every discretionary category. Squeeze hard enough and you break the velocity of money. Workers with no spare hours and no spare income stop circulating it, and demand dries up behind them, which is how a recession starts. You cannot automate away your own customers and expect them to keep buying. Capitalism is consumer-driven, and that means a healthy economy depends on consumers with healthy spending.
TIME marked the centenary in May, arguing that Ford’s five-day workweek is due for an AI-era upgrade. Keynes predicted a fifteen-hour work week within a century, and we are a far cry from that. While Keynes only predicted it, Henry Ford did it: he cut his factories to 40 hours in 1926, kept the pay, and argued plainly that leisure drives the consumption of goods, and consumption drives business. He wanted the people who built his cars to have the time and money to buy one. Nobody handed Ford a mandate, and he didn’t wait for the rest of Detroit to agree.
So let me put it plainly to my peers: there’s the option to be a visionary right in front of you. Lead, and make the change happen. If all you do is wait for it, you’re less of a visionary and more of a reactionary.
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We’re overdue on the next change, and it’s time for this generation of executive leadership to be the Henry Ford of our era. And if we somehow can’t manage that, then we should be honest about what all this productivity is really for, and who it was ever meant to serve.
