4.8 • 861 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
When we clock in on Monday morning, most of us are looking at a 40-hour work week. But what’s so special about 40 hours? Andrew Blackman joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the history of the 40-hour week, how the Great Depression finally presented an opportunity to shrink the working day, and how we might shave off even more hours in our modern era. His article “How Did We Get a 40-Hour Workweek and Has It Had Its Day?” was published in The Wall Street Journal.
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| 1:05.6 | Lots of us fantasize about tipping work-life balance in a different direction, earning enough to live decently while |
| 1:12.1 | giving fewer hours to our employers. So here's a question. Why is 40 hours the standard work |
| 1:18.4 | week anyway? From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. My guest is freelance writer Andrew |
| 1:25.2 | Blackman, who's recently been digging into the history of what we think of as full-time employment. |
| 1:30.8 | And it turns out anybody with a 9-to-5, 5-day-a-week gig is living out the fantasy of 19th century labor activists. |
| 1:38.8 | The article about this is titled, How Did We Get a 40-hour work week and Has It Had Its Day, appears in the Wall Street Journal. |
| 1:46.3 | Andrew, welcome to think. |
| 1:48.5 | Thanks, Chris. |
| 1:49.8 | There is a certain irony to a freelance writer pulling together the history of the 40-hour |
| 1:54.6 | work week. Presumably, your schedule might not always fit into those predictable nine-to-five days. |
| 2:01.7 | Yeah, I have not worked a nine to five for many years. |
| 2:04.5 | I did in the past. |
| 2:05.6 | A long time ago, I worked in office jobs, |
| 2:07.5 | but I've been freelance for a long time. |
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