In Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930), John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that rising productivity would lead to a 15-hour working week by 2030. Nearly a century later, this vision remains unfulfilled. A new study by the World Inequality Lab finds that, while Keynes’s analysis that labour hours tend to fall as productivity rises was broadly correct, the standard neoclassical framework does not fully explain the uneven pace of this decline across time, regions, and social groups. In particular, it overlooks the roles of power relations and unpaid women labour in shaping the structure of work.
While most research to date on the evolution and determinants of labour hours has focused on recent decades and high-income countries, World Inequality Lab researchers Marie Andreescu, Romaine Loubes, Thomas Piketty, and Anne-Sophie Robilliard provide the first global historical perspective. They constructed global harmonized historical series on labour hours by gender, employment status and sector in 57 core territories (48 main countries and nine residual regions) covering all world regions across the 1800-2025 period. Based on these historical trends, the study revisits Keynes’ vision and outlines a potential path to a high-productivity, high-leisure future by the year 2100, while meeting the growing social demand for planetary sustainability and socioeconomic justice.
KEY FINDINGS:
- Over two centuries, global work hours have fallen significantly (-34%), from about 3,200 hours (equivalent to about 60-65 hours per week all year long) to around 2,100 hours (about 40 hours per week including two weeks in paid vacation), and with large variations across periods and regions. The rise of the labour movement, trade unions and working-class political parties played a critical role in the reduction of working hours, through collective mobilizations, class struggles, changing institutions and social norms.
- The global decline in labour hours is linked to the long-run rise in productivity, with sizable variations across regions, periods and sectors.
- At the global level, hourly productivity (net domestic product per work hour) rose from about 0.7€ in 1800 to 16€ in 2025 (PPP, 2025 €).
- In 2025, hourly productivity ranges from 4€ across Subsaharan Africa to 55-60€ in the USA, Sweden, Germany or France.
- In the long-run, about 35-40% of the rise in productivity was used to reduce labour hours and obtain extra leisure and 60-65% to raise production.
- Power relations and unpaid labour have played a key role in the changing structure of labour hours throughout the 1800-2025 period. When unpaid domestic work is accounted for, the gender gap in hourly pay is far greater than conventional measures suggest. Using this definition, the gender pay gap reaches 40-50% in rich countries, as opposed to 10-20% in conventional estimates.
- Based on historical trends, the paper offers a prospective analysis of possible future trajectories over the 2025-2100 period.
- In a business as usual scenario, continued growth at 1990-2025 rates would lead to widening North-South inequality divide, with enormous demographic pressures, risks of rising political conflict about climate/post-colonial reparations and very large difficulties to cooperate on the climate and other global challenges.
- A more optimistic scenario – requiring massive investment in human capital and infrastructure in the global South – would see global hourly productivity converge to around 100€ in all countries by 2100, together with substantial reduction in work hours and gender gaps and large sectoral reallocation of labour time away from the most polluting sectors.
This paper is the first in a series of research papers and technical notes that will form the backbone of the Global Justice Report, due to be released in June 2026.
AUTHORS
- Marie Andreescu, WIL (World Inequality Lab), PSE (Paris School of Economics)
- Romaine Loubes, WIL, PSE
- Thomas Piketty, WIL, PSE
- Anne-Sophie Robilliard, WIL, PSE and LEDA (Dauphine-IRD-CNRS)
MEDIA CONTACT
- press[at]wid.world
