Working 40 Hours or Not Working 39: Lessons from the 1981 Mandatory Reduction of Weekly Working Hours

Bruno Crépon and Francis Kramarz ()

No 2158, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We use longitudinal individual wage, hours, and employment data to investigate the effect of the 1981 mandatory reduction of weekly working hours in France. A few months after François Mitterrand's election of May 1981, the government, applying its programme decided first to increase the minimum wage by 5% and, second, to reduce weekly working hours - from 40 to 39 - together with mandatory stability of monthly earnings of minimum wage workers and strong recommendation for stability of monthly earnings for other workers (indeed followed by 90% of the firms). We show that workers directly affected by these changes, those working 40 hours in March 1981, lost their jobs between 1981 and 1983 more often than workers not affected by the changes, those working 39 hours in March 1981 ; their year-to-year job loss probability increased from roughly 10% to 12.5%. Moreover, workers affected by both minimum wage changes and hours reduction were even more strongly hit ; their year-to-year job loss probability increased from roughly 10% to 26%. These results should help us understand the possible effects of the forthcoming mandatory reduction of hours in France, the weekly working hours going from 39 to 35 hours in year 2000. Similar projects are envisaged in other European countries hoping that hours reduction are an efficient way of tackling their unemployment problem.

Keywords: Hours Reduction; Minimum Wage; Unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=2158 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Working 40 hours or Not-Working 39: Lessons from the 1981 Mandatory Reduction of Weekly Working Hours (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2158

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=2158

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().