I want to support this, but I guess I just don't understand how the economics of it works?

Firstly, I would just note that wealth can't be legislated into existence. It has to be created against entropy, with effort. If something is effortless then there is no value in it.

So in an efficient economy where all labour was being used productively at all times it's basically just physics that a 4 day work week would reduce total economic output, and as a consequence lower per-capita wealth.

However, being charitable here, I think there are some nuances in the real world because labour isn't always used productively -- especially when companies are unprofitable due to high energy bills.

> “With many businesses struggling to afford 10% inflation pay rises, we’re starting to see increasing evidence that a four-day week with no loss of pay is being offered as an alternative solution.”

I used to work on the a high street in the UK and we'd often close an hour or two early in the winter if it was quiet. Reason being it made little sense keeping the shop heated and powered for us just to be sat around doing nothing until close of business. In those few hours (late on the day in winter, often when raining) the company was briefly unprofitable to operate and therefore closing early made economic sense.

I can only assume a lot of shops and restaurants are in a similar position in the UK today. So if you can do 95% of your typical business over just 4 days then this probably makes a lot of sense. But what I don't understand is that surely in the vast majority of cases it would make far more sense to close a bit earlier instead of closing for an entire day? If you're a restaurant for example, just operating at peak times could be a good idea.

But whether this is good or bad will massively vary from business to business. Companies which don't have peak days or times will see little benefit from something like this. Perhaps some companies could neglect certain customers and clients for more profitable ones. A plumber might just focus on jobs for wealthier clients for example then perhaps they can take the Friday off.

But what I don't understand here is this idea that we can reduce the work week to 4 days without cost as a general rule. Let's take a fairly typical company which has a 5% profit margin and where 50% of costs are labour costs. Eg, for every £100 in sales, £50 goes to labour and £5 is profit. Lets now increase the hourly cost of that labour by 20% as suggested... Now for every £100 in sales, £60 goes to labour and -£5 is made in profit.

Of course, big business with better margins will probably be fine but a move like this would likely bankrupt most typical highstreet businesses. The economics just doesn't make any sense without some plan to increase productivity by 20%.

And then how would something like this work in the NHS? Can we even afford to reduce nurses hours by 20%? Are we really suggesting that would have no economic impact or would we need to increase the NHS workforce by 20%? Could we even afford that?

But if you really want to reduce your work week by 20% the correct way to do it (imo) is to find more productive uses for your labour. If you can increase your income by 20% you can spend 20% less time working at no cost to your annual income. Or you can just take a 20% hit to your annual income. Most of us here could probably afford to do that now. We just choose to work because we're greedy.