Automation never results in more leisure. It results in more specialized work and increased workloads. The sentiment expressed in the first line is why I intend to stay working remotely for as long as possible. I hated the fact I saw a drab grey cubicle farm more than my house and family.
Children are not working, students are not working, the retired are not working, depending on the household stay at home parents aren’t working that much, the unemployed are not working.
Automation and increased productivity has resulted in a lot of leisure. It’s not evenly distributed but hours worked per capita is not on an upward trend.
Too glib; they've been holding pretty steady at 8 hours, mainly due to regulation. Other work has increased hours, such as in many areas of health care, for example. Many folks also patch together multiple jobs in order to achieve a livable income and can work upwards of 12-16 hour days. I know several, personally.
Keynes predicted we'd be down to 3 or 4 hours a day by now, but that never happened due (partly) to the ever-increasing competitive ability/imposition that technology allows managers and shareholders to impose on labor in an effort to maximize economic potential and productivity.
How many hours do people work, really, though. If management became more lenient of people going home when the day's work is over, I imagine we would be a lot closer to 4hrs/day.
If my workplace announced that policy I'd just assume they wanted to know how productive I actually was. I would leave on time to signal that I had an appropriate workload.
Even now, average working hours in developed nations are above the "legal norm".
Though the automation definitely helped to make it more feasible to work less, there is still a political fight to be had to push the hours down even more.
Once you go remote it's hard to go back. I have been remote for 4 years now and I can't imagine doing the whole commute / office thing ever again. I don't even care if they pay more, nope. No way.
Amazingly enough, this is exactly how I feel. There's no chance for raises, although the company have a lot of opportunities to make more money, but I can't deal with the commute and office politics ever again.
