70/90 Work Week and the Productivity Imperative

The nation will need to devise its own balance between working hours and productivity, and not rely on imitating systems elsewhere.

- Vivek Joshi

Recent comments by some senior business leaders on the need to work 70 or 90 long hours have made headlines, and digital storms on social media. There have also been serious discussions on the impacts. The concerns on rest and recuperation for workers is legitimate. The consternation appears to be much more in the category of white collar workers who generally have a work week of 40 hours/week. However, when doing copy-paste from western practices, it is useful to be mindful of the contexts and histories of how the developed western world attained their current status.

Underlying economics Prosperity of a nation and welfare of its people is seen from the income per capita, often seen as average GDP/ capita as a proxy. This is about $7766 per annum for India in 2022, compared to $58487 (both Geary Khermis dollars, 2011) for USA in Angus Matheson database which enables comparison across countries over large periods of time. Note that the G-K dollars are a proxy for PPP (purchasing power parity). At market exchange rates (MER), the per capita income in India would be only about $2800/person/ year compared to about $84000/person/year in USA. For prosperity and GDP/capita to increase to the levels of a developed country, the numerator (GDP or total output) has to increase, and the denominator (population) must increase at a slower rate or remain constant or decrease, as in the case of Japan. Key enablers of the increase in GDP include the working age population, the productivity (output/worker) of the working age population, and the dependency ratio (DR) of the population divided by the working age population. Mathematically, this can be expressed incorporating several important ratios as,

Output"(Total Population)x(working age population/TotalPopulation) x(Labour Force/Working Age Population or TFPR) x(1 - Unemployment) x (Output/hour worked) x(number of hours worked/ week) x (working weeks / year).