4-day workweeks are becoming the norm in the Netherlands, which has the highest rate of part-time working in the OECD.
Average working weekly hours for people aged 20 to 64 are of 32.1, which are the shortest in the EU, says Eurostat.
Women started working in the Netherlands only from the 1980s on, which created the “one-and-a-half” earner model, a tax-beneficial arrangement. But men have recently started to go part-time themselves in the Netherlands, though women are still the strong representative of part-time work in the Netherlands. As such, only 27% of managers in the Netherlands are women.
In spite of its shorter average working hours per person, the Netherlands is one of the richest economies in the EU in terms of GDP per head, thanks to high rates of employment (82%, compared to 75% in the UK, 72% in the US, and 69% in France).
More tenuously, shorter working hours have been found to be associated with relatively high productivity per hour.
Part-time work makes retiring early difficult — people in the Netherlands tend to retire rather late. What’s more, there are labour shortages in sectors like teaching, which often provides free childcare. This strain on public services keeps the status quo of parents staying in part-time work, therefore, afloat. In fact, the whole system stays afloat: national GDP is neither collapsing nor soaring.
In any case, children in the Netherlands rank as the happiest in the world, UNICEF has discovered via a study.
It looks like the Dutch, notorious and in many ways aspiration for their simple lifestyles, prioritize time over money.
Beyond part-time work, many have chosen to work more intensely for four days instead of working without packing-in for five. Tuesday and Thursday are considered meeting days.
It has also become increasingly common for full-time workers to compress their hours into four days rather than spread them over five, says Bert Colijn, an economist at Dutch bank ING, who has noted that he is even scrutinized for working five days by his colleagues.
In 2019, in Germany, the Bridge Part Time scheme was implemented, allowing employees from bigger companies to temporarily reduce their working hours for between one to five years, after which they seamlessly return to their full-time hours without bureaucratic addenda.
This is usually used for parental leave.
Historically, work reform has always started in Europe.
Sweden, however, still holds hard onto the 5-day workweek, and shows a rise in unemployment. Finland, too, has seen big unemployment rates, and has a generally slumping economy, despite its resources for export.
