(I say US in the title because that's where I'm from and I'm unfamiliar with how the rest of the world does it. I assume it's the same but don't want to assume incorrectly).
So, why do we still follow a five day/40 hour work week despite the population of the US growing by over 200 million people since it was first implemented in or around 1926. The population of the US was (approx.) 117.3 million people in 1926 and it's at 334.2 as of January 2023. For the past couple years I've done some thinking about how much time we spend at work vs how much time we actually get to ourselves during our off time. For instance, why doesn't a company that runs three eight hour shifts instead run four 6 hour shifts? Bringing in an entire new shift of workers helps lower unemployment. Spending less time at work means average citizens have more time to do the things they enjoy which in turn helps to stimulate the economy. Now I get it, the biggest reason why we don't see this is because the company would have to continue to pay those employees the same money they were making at five days/40 hours, or else they'd most definitely end up quitting.
I'm only going to put the one example out there because I don't want this to turn into a wall of text but I'm interested to hear if anyone else has ever had similar ideas or just feels the same way. Over the years I've just grown so tired and disillusioned with the concept of work as the vast majority of us are simply low paid cogs in the machine while the top percentage gets to reap all the benefits. Corporate greed, stagnating wages, rising inflation and a housing bubble that seems it's never going to pop just leave me more and more disappointed by the day. What's your take?