Two years ago, the Swedish Left lost the general election to a center-right coalition. Halfway to the next election, the Left is already hard at work coming up with an election platform.
Back in August, the biggest of the left-of-center parties, the social democrats, released a report where they called for a shortening of the statutory full-time workweek. The report alleges that a cut from 40 hours to 35 hours is necessary to align Sweden with “comparable countries” in the EU.
The report boldly refers to the reform as the “freedom reform of the century,” which is probably a more deliberate choice of words than it may seem at first; the report is short on statistics and analytical comparisons between Sweden and an unbiased sample of other countries. Nevertheless, by giving the reduction of the workweek such a prominent status, the social democrats give away two things about what they will do if they win the 2026 election:
- They will pass this reform into law, which means that Swedish businesses should take the 35-hour workweek idea seriously; and
- There are no other ideas of this magnitude in the pipeline.
The last point is important, given the poor state of the Swedish economy (which I will address in a separate article). There will be no structural reforms to the ailing welfare state, to its under-performing health care and education systems, or the highly burdensome tax system. Not that any such reforms were to be expected from the Swedish social democrats, but it is nevertheless an important political signal that the currently governing right-of-center coalition should pick up on.
While planning their approach to the 2026 election, the incumbent coalition government should also take seriously how to counter the idea of a shorter workweek. Although the idea can be expected to be popular, it is essential that the right-of-center government informs the electorate about the major problems associated with it.
To begin with, there is no need for a shorter workweek of the kind that the social democrats present. The current 40-hour full-time week is not long by international comparison. It is a common mistake (or, as in this case, a deliberate obfuscation of statistics) to suggest that the statutory workweek is the same as the actual workweek. As Figure 1 reports, this is by no means true. On the contrary, despite the fact that the EU has declared 40 hours the default full-time week, the hours of an average actual regular workweek in the 27 EU member states vary significantly. Sweden (highlighted) is very much in the middle of the pack with its 38.3 hours:
Figure 1
There is another side to the numbers in Figure 1. Suppose the social democrats in Sweden got what they wanted, and the statutory workweek was cut down to 35 hours. All other things equal, given that Swedes already work 1.7 hours—or 4.3%—less than the 40-hour week, a post-reform actual average workweek would likely end up being 33.5 hours per week (the same 4.3% reduction). This would be the fewest hours anyone would put in, apart from the Netherlands, where they only work 31.6 hours on average.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong per se with a shorter workweek. The problem for the Swedish socialists is that their reform imposes a work-week reduction without regard for the differences between industries. Even more problematic is the fact that the businesses that are supposed to maintain total weekly pay—even though the workforce puts in 13% fewer hours (per Table 1)—will have to pull in more revenue, despite the drop in production.
There is a way to make this work, but it would have to be left to the private sector to handle. An improvement in productivity could compensate for the shortening of the workweek; if workers can produce the same output value after the cut in hours as they did before it, then they have secured enough money to keep their compensation unchanged.
Unfortunately, Swedish workers are not very good at improving their productivity. Figure 2 shows how much labor productivity had improved in 2023 over 2015: if the number on the vertical axis is higher than 100, it means that productivity has grown; if it is at 100 or below, it means that productivity is unchanged (or worse) compared to 2015. For example, labor productivity in Czechia and Croatia is indicated as 110 for 2023, which means it is 10% better than it was in 2015. Sweden is represented by the gray column, which as it happens is just below the darker green one, i.e., the EU average:
Figure 2
With a productivity trend that is weaker than the EU average, Sweden is not in a position where its economy can pay for a workweek reduction as the social democrats have proposed. It comes as no surprise that the proposal has met resistance from business organizations; some representatives of those organizations are suggesting that it may cause an exodus of businesses from Sweden.
A solution far better than a statutorily dictated reduction in the workweek would be to simply abolish the statutes altogether; the length of the workweek is best left to agreements between employers and employees.
