The Evolution of the Workweek

According to anthropologists, people in preindustrial societies spent 3 to 4 hours per day or about 20 hours per week doing the work necessary for life. Modern comparisons of the amount of work performed per week, however, begin with the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840) when 10- to 12-hour workdays with six workdays per week were the [#highlight3]norm[/highlight3].

Even with extensive time devoted to work, both incomes and standards of living were low. As incomes rose near the end of the Industrial Revolution, it became increasingly common to treat Saturday afternoons as a half-day holiday.

In the United States, the first third of the twentieth century saw the workweek move from 60 hours per week to just under 50 hours by the start of the 1930s. In 1914 Henry Ford reduced daily work hours at his automobile plants from 9 to 8. In 1926 he announced that his factories would close for the entire day on Saturday.

The Depression years of the 1930's brought with them the notion of job sharing to spread available work around; the workweek dropped to a modern low for the United States of 35 hours.[#highlight5]In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act mandated a weekly maximum of 40 hours to begin in 1940, and since that time the 8-hour day, 5-day workweek has been the standard in the United States.[/highlight5]