Barcelona Metropolis

In a celebrated lecture delivered in Madrid in 1930, the eminent economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, within a century, wealth would have grown so much that just fifteen hours of work per week would suffice to meet personal needs. Since productivity has far outpaced his projections, why hasn’t his prediction about working time come true? Several factors help explain it.

In 1930, the world was in the grip of the worst economic crisis it had ever known. Industrial production was plummeting, international trade was collapsing, and unemployment had reached unprecedented levels. It was in this context that John Maynard Keynes travelled to Madrid to give a lecture at the Residencia de Estudiantes, a key hub of Spanish intellectual life which, in previous years, had hosted figures such as Lorca, Dalí and Buñuel. We do not know for certain who attended that day, but we do know that the hall was filled with businesspeople, diplomats and intellectuals curious to hear from the man already regarded as the most influential economist of his time. He was expected to analyse the crisis and provide guidance on how to overcome it. But instead of speaking about the Great Depression, Keynes devoted his talk – titled “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” – to imagining the future, a hundred years ahead.

What motivated Keynes, the most influential economist of the day, to overlook the present and focus his lecture on the future? He was, of course, fully aware of the severity of the crisis gripping the world in 1930. He justified his approach by saying that he wished to free himself from short-term concerns and focus on the bigger picture. In his view, the difficulties of the time – however grave – were part of a transition, not an endpoint. The only way to properly interpret what was happening was to adopt a long-term perspective. That is why he posed an unusual question for such a bleak context: How will we live a hundred years from now? What economic possibilities will our grandchildren have? Keynes chose to carry out a provocative exercise in foresight: to imagine a world in which the economic problem had been solved and work no longer occupied the centre of our lives.

To support his forecast, Keynes drew on two economic trends he had studied: technological progress and capital accumulation. Since the Industrial Revolution, he argued, humanity had seen an unprecedented acceleration in its ability to produce goods and services. Labour efficiency had steadily improved, meaning less and less human effort was needed to generate greater wealth. Added to this was the exponential effect of investment: capital tends to grow over time, further fuelling economic growth. If these two dynamics continued, he suggested, within a century the material needs of most people could be met with just a few hours of work each week. And this wouldn’t be because human desires had disappeared, but because basic needs could be met with minimal effort.¹

Keynes made two key economic predictions. First, that if war could be avoided and technological progress continued, the average standard of living in developed countries would be four to eight times higher than in 1930. He wasn’t referring to GDP – an indicator that didn’t yet exist – but to what he called the “standard of living”: the amount of goods and services available to each person. His second prediction was even bolder: that this increase in wealth would allow for a dramatic reduction in the amount of work required. In his vision, just three hours of work per day – 15 per week – would be enough to meet material needs. The economic problem, as humanity had always known it, would be solved.

A reality far from Keynes’s prediction

Looking at it from today’s perspective, Keynes’s prediction about economic growth fell short, despite the impact of the Second World War. Current data shows that real per capita income has increased by eight to ten times in countries such as the UK, the US and across the European Union. In this respect, reality has far surpassed his forecast. However, when it comes to working hours, progress has been far more limited. In 1930, the typical working week in industrial sectors was around 50 hours, with high levels of informality and the continued existence of child labour in some sectors. Today, in most developed countries, the standard working week is between 35 and 40 hours, still a long way from the 15 hours per week that Keynes imagined as a possible target.

The 15-hour working week Keynes envisioned would have provided an unprecedented amount of free time in modern history. At first glance, this might seem liberating, but it was also a cause for concern. Keynes’s unease about leisure was not accidental or purely moral. It came from an empirical observation: those who were already freed from economic necessity – the upper classes of his time – did not seem to be using their freedom wisely. Rather than cultivating personal interests or contributing to the common good, many seemed caught in apathy, boredom or a futile search for entertainment. From this, Keynes feared that if the rest of the population reached a similar situation without a prior cultural shift, abundance could lead to frustration rather than well-being. He warned, therefore, that the real challenge of the future would not be economic, but psychological and educational: learning to live well without the constant push of necessity. Leisure, far from being a guarantee of happiness, could become a burden if it lacked meaning.

Why was Keynes wrong in his prediction about the 15-hour working week, even though standards of living have grown even more than he had expected? The issue has been widely debated. One of the most compelling explanations is that technological progress hasn’t benefited everyone equally: productivity gains have mainly been concentrated among the more skilled workers and in very specific sectors, while others have been left behind or pushed out of the labour market altogether. The polarisation of employment and the weakening of workers’ bargaining power have prevented a general reduction in working hours.

Another explanation points to the sustained growth in consumption. Once basic needs have been met, material desires don’t stop – they expand. New products, services, experiences and lifestyles require extra income and, therefore, more working hours. In other words, the increases in productivity have not been entirely directed towards reducing working hours, as Keynes had predicted, but have instead translated into a broader capacity for consumption. Keynes made a distinction between absolute needs (food, clothing, shelter and basic services) and relative needs (having a better car than the neighbour, travelling further than others, dressing fashionably or gaining access to certain social circles), but he underestimated the weight and evolution of the latter.

There’s also another possibility: that Keynes wasn’t aiming to make an accurate prediction, but rather to provoke thought. His 15-hour working week prediction might have been intended to make us reflect on what could have been achieved with the progress made. After all, he knew no one would be alive in 2030 to hold him to account, and he summed up his indifference to the distant future with one of his most famous remarks: “In the long run we are all dead”.

Should a legal reduction in working hours be imposed?

Nearly a century after Keynes’s lecture, the idea of reducing working hours has resurfaced in public debate – not as a natural outcome of economic progress, but as a potential political decision. In the current debate over reducing working hours by law – such as the proposal to reduce the working week from 40 to 37.5 hours – it’s important to remember something Keynes was clear about: productivity must improve first, and only then can working hours be reduced.

Throughout history, every major technological revolution has raised concerns about job losses, but over time, it has resulted in shorter working hours, as long as productivity increases allowed for it. Mechanisation, electrification and digitalisation have all made it possible to produce more with less human effort, creating more free time for workers. However, this process has never been automatic – it has always depended on both technological progress and social negotiations.

Imposing a legal reduction in working hours in Spain to 37.5 hours, without considering the diversity of the country’s productive sectors, could have significant negative effects. Specifically, it would lead to a direct increase in labour costs per hour worked (around 6.7%), inflationary pressures if companies pass on this extra cost through higher prices, or reduced business margins, which in more vulnerable sectors could lead to cuts in investment, job losses or the replacement of workers with capital.

The impact would be particularly challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as for sectors such as hospitality, retail and care work, where productivity is harder to increase rapidly. Moreover, not all workers want the same thing: some may prefer to maintain their current working hours in exchange for higher pay. Imposing a blanket reduction, with no room for adaptation, could harm those who most need income or flexibility. For this reason, rather than enforcing change from the top down, a more sensible approach would be to move towards a new balance through collective bargaining – respecting the pace of each sector and ensuring a negotiated transition. As history has shown, the key does not lie in political imposition, but in supporting change with real productivity gains and lasting social agreements.

It seems clear that if all productivity gains had been used to shorten the working week, Keynes would have been far closer to the mark. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case: a significant portion of those gains has gone into sustaining an economic model centred on ever-increasing consumption. Keynes had already warned that the true challenge of the future would not be economic, but cultural and psychological: learning how to live well once material needs had been met. In his view, without a shift in our values and priorities, abundance might not lead to happiness, but to confusion and discontent.

In that sense, something may be starting to shift. A growing number of young people are clearly placing greater value on free time: some are willing to give up part of their salary in exchange for more leisure, greater autonomy, and a better work-life balance. Trends such as quiet quitting, the rejection of presenteeism and the rise of remote work point to a renewed appreciation of time as a vital resource. Perhaps, if this cultural transformation takes root, we may still have time to realise something close to what Keynes envisioned: a world no longer organised around scarcity, where the economy is no longer about how to distribute what’s lacking, but how to allocate resources in conditions of relative abundance. A world in which economists can finally stop being crisis managers and instead become – just as Keynes hoped for himself – something more akin to competent technicians. As he wrote, with his usual mix of irony and optimism: “If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid”.

Keynes imagined the future from the depths of the 20th century’s greatest crisis; perhaps it now falls to us to imagine it amid the challenges of the 21st: population ageing, artificial intelligence and climate change.

1 Although Keynes does not use the term “labor productivity” in his essay, he clearly refers to the idea when talking about “technical efficiency”, which he defines as the ability to produce more with less human effort. While the term “productivity” was already in use in economic circles in the 1930s, it wasn’t as commonly found in public or popular texts as it is today.