It was a year ago when a scathing New York Times article waylaid the work culture at Amazon describing it as ‘soul-crushing’ and ‘cutthroat’ putting management on the defensive and business in general on notice.  For me, it was clearly just another salvo from the work-life movement which takes power from C-suites and places it in the hands of the babysitter’s schedule.  If this is the case, picking on the hottest company in the world which could be the first with a trillion-dollar market cap was brilliant…and it worked!

Amazon has announced it will have teams that work 30 hour weeks.  They will make 75% of their full-time counterparts and get full benefits.  There is an even more intriguing aspect of this experiment where a team of technicians are working 10am to 2pm.  They will have company as there are 20.4 million Americans working part-time because they want to!

I'm not surprised this is happening. The "work-life balance" movement has been on the move for a long time.  I think it comes from the same river whose tributaries include social justice and safe spaces.  It’s a reaction to a great nation that’s reached a self-inflected plateau and believes there is no more upside.  But it really speaks to the bifurcated nature of the nation where some folks cannot only have their cake and eat it too but it is rich and delicious.

On the other hand, people making less long for more hours and can’t get them and when they can they gobble them up.  There are statistics that show the average American works 34.4 hours a week compared to 26.4 hours in Germany but I think those numbers are misleading.  I think the Gallup Poll (see below) is more accurate. 

The idea that businesses and government must accommodate the worker is only going to grow from here.

This stuff is resonating as both presidential candidates make allowances for child care in their tax plans. 

I’m not prepared to say Amazon got completely bullied on this topic.  With workers putting in less time the company will introduce more software, artificial intelligence and robots.  Initially these “aides and tools” will make it easier to achieve work in the work-life balance equation.  At some point, however, the arrangement will see workers getting more life and less work.

While this is all playing out, I think it’s a major mistake for America to work less while France is pushing hard to work more hours and there is even a real effort at cutting that Spanish siesta to two hours from three (got to start somewhere).  This is not the time to put it in neutral.  It’s actually time to work harder to jumpstart the nation and move to higher peaks.

Today’s Session

It’s going to be a flat session for the market for the market, which has mostly yawned.  The 177,000 number is largely in line with expectations so it doesn’t tilt or alter consensus for the Friday number. That said, any action this week will be a skewed glimpse of sentiment.

I’ll have more on these numbers tomorrow along with BLS preview.