Employed 40 Hours or Not Employed 39: Lessons from the 1982 Mandatory Reduction of the Workweek

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor, (2) internationalization of labor markets, (3) the welfare state and labor markets, (4) labor markets in transition countries, (5) the future of labor, (6) evaluation of labor market policies and projects and (7) general labor economics. Terms of use: Documents inIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. Mitterrand's election in May 1981, the government decided to increase the minimum wage by 5%. Then, as promised in its electoral program, the socialist government reduced the workweek from 40 to 39 hours. At the same time, it mandated stable monthly earnings for minimum wage workers and recommended the stabilization of monthly earnings for other workers (recommendations followed by 90% of the firms). We show that workers directly affected by these changes-those working 40 hours in March 1981 as well as those working overtime at the same date -were more likely to lose their jobs between 1981 and 1982 than workers not affected by the changes-those working 36 to 39 hours in March 1981. Moreover, because the decree enforcing the new standard was issued faster than earlier promises, some firms had no time to complete negotiations and their workers were still working 40 hours after February 1, 1982. We show that these workers were also strongly affected by the reduction in standard hours. Our estimates of the impact of this one-hour reduction of the workweek on employment losses vary between 2% and 4%, depending on the methodology or the data used. Furthermore, we show that minimum wage workers were most affected by the changes. This result, consistent with...

The effect of overtime regulations on employment

“…In February 1982, France implemented a mandatory reduction in weekly hours from 40 to 39. Among workers who had been employed in March 1981, those who had been working 40 or more hours a week in March 1981 were more likely to lose their jobs between 1981 and 1982 than those who had been working 36-39 hours [4]. The employment losses associated with the mandated workweek reduction ranged from 2% to 4%.…”

Are the French Happy with the 35-Hour Workweek?

“…At the same time, employment increased by 9.9% in firms who adopted the 35-hours schedule. Crépon and Kramarz (2002) study the employment effects of an earlier law: the 1982 reduction in the workweek from 40 to 39 hours. They explore the variation in hours worked to design a quasiexperiment.…”

“…We impose a cutoff at 49 employees to ensure more homogeneity between the treatment and control groups. 10 In some specifications we also explore the variation across individuals working different hours, as in Crépon and Kramarz (2002). Because the restriction in hours did not bind for individuals already working 35 hours or less before the law, they were not affected by it and could serve as a control group.…”

Revisión sistemática de la efectividad de las medidas de reparto de empleo

“…Así lo indican las evaluaciones de las experiencias desarrolladas en Alemania (Hunt, 1999;Steiner y Peters, 2000), Canadá (Skuterud et al, 2007) o Chile (Sánchez, 2013), y también en Francia, en relación con la reforma de 1982, que redujo la jornada de 40 a 39 horas semanales (Crépon y Kramarz, 2002).…”