Custodes Futurifor the advancement of humanity

Economic factor, barrier 4 of 6

Time poverty and precarious work

Long hours, multiple jobs, and unpredictable schedules leave little time for learning or reflection. Across OECD countries, lack of time due to work or family is the most commonly reported barrier to adult learning (OECD, 2025).

Evidence

  • Adult learning. In the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills, about one in four adults reported a barrier to adult learning. Lack of time due to work or family was the most common reason (48%), ahead of a lack of suitable training (14%) and cost (13%). These are self-reported reasons.
  • Long hours. In 2016, an estimated 488 million people (8.9% of the world's population) worked 55 or more hours a week. WHO and ILO attributed 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease to these hours (Pega et al., 2021).
  • Contested estimate. Independent epidemiologists argued the heart disease link was weaker and not statistically significant in the higher-quality studies (Kivimäki et al., 2020). The review authors replied that their conclusion stands, so the death estimates are contested.

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the economic factor page.

  • Predictable scheduling laws (Approved but not scaled, B). These laws require employers in sectors such as retail and food service to post schedules in advance and pay a premium for last-minute changes. After Seattle's Secure Scheduling ordinance, enacted in 2017, survey data from workers in Seattle and comparison cities showed more predictable and stable schedules and gains in subjective well-being, sleep quality, and economic security (Harknett, Schneider, and Irwin, 2021). Outcomes are self-reported, and the study covers one city.
  • Stable scheduling by employers (Early trial, C). In a randomized pilot at 28 Gap stores in the San Francisco and Chicago areas (19 treatment, 9 control) from November 2015 to August 2016, practices such as more consistent shifts and fewer last-minute changes were followed by a 7% rise in median sales and a 5% rise in labor productivity (Williams et al., 2018). Treatment stores also received extra staffing hours, which are mixed in with the effect, gains in predictability were modest, and it is a single retailer in a report, not a peer-reviewed paper.
  • Four-day work week without pay cuts (Early trial, C). In trials across 141 organizations in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S., 2,896 employees moved to a four-day week with no loss of pay for six months after reorganizing work. Burnout, job satisfaction, and self-rated mental and physical health improved, while 12 control companies did not show this pattern, and larger individual cuts in hours went with larger gains (Fan et al., 2025). Firms volunteered through an advocacy organization, assignment was not random, the control group was small, and outcomes are self-reported.
  • Reversed: Austria's paid educational leave (Failed or reversed, B). Workers could take paid leave from work for training (Bildungskarenz). Austria's Court of Audit found spending in 2021 was €295.7 million, almost three times the 2010 level, that more than half of the women who started it in 2021 came directly from parental leave, and that 53% of users earned more three years later versus 66% for a much cheaper part-time version (Rechnungshof, 2023). The scheme ended in March 2025 after costing about €640 million in its last year, replaced from 2026 by a stricter program with a €150 million annual budget cap (The Local, 2025).
  • Failed: England's Individual Learning Accounts (Failed or reversed, B). Launched in September 2000 to give adults public money for training of their choice, the scheme opened about 2.6 million accounts and spent about £273 million against a £199 million budget before being closed abruptly in November 2001. At the time of the audit, 133 training providers paid about £67 million in total were under investigation and 98 had been referred to the police (NAO, 2002).

Sources cited on this page

  1. OECD (2025). Trends in Adult Learning: why is participation not more common? B Moderate
  2. Pega, F., et al. (2021). Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000-2016 (WHO/ILO Joint Estimates). Environment International, 154, 106595. DOI B Moderate: for how many work long hours, D for the heart disease deaths
  3. Kivimäki, M., Virtanen, M., Nyberg, S. T., & Batty, G. D. (2020). The WHO/ILO report on long working hours and ischaemic heart disease: conclusions are not supported by the evidence. Environment International, 144, 106048. DOI B Moderate
  4. Fan, W., Schor, J. B., Kelly, O., & Gu, G. (2025). Work time reduction via a 4-day workweek finds improvements in workers' well-being. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(10), 2153-2168. link C Limited
  5. Harknett, K., Schneider, D., & Irwin, V. (2021). Improving health and economic security by reducing work schedule uncertainty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(42), e2107828118. link B Moderate
  6. Williams, J. C., Lambert, S. J., Kesavan, S., Fugiel, P. J., Ospina, L. A., Rapoport, E. D., et al. (2018). Stable scheduling study report. WorkLife Law. link C Limited

Every source for this factor is listed on the economic factor page.