How much would reducing the workweek reduce unemployment?

[TNF]

Assuming we cut the working week down from 40 hours to 30 hours, how much would we see unemployment drop as a result?

[DC Al Fine]

Assuming that you'd still have to pay full time benefits and overtime if more than 30 hours was worked... massive growth in part time employment.

[Blue3]

This is nonsensical.

You're either going to cut the pay of all/most current workers by 20%, or you're going to be paying people more for doing less. As well as being completely artificial and unsustainable.

There are many jobs that employers are having trouble finding employees for. The problem is that there aren't people with the proper training and qualifications for those jobs. The unemployment crisis is really a training/education crisis.

[jaichind]

France actually tried this in 2000-2005 by moving the working week to 35 hours.  This has been on the platform of the French Socialist Party since the 1970s but it was enacted into law in 2000.  Unemployment did fall from 9.3% to 8% after the law was enacted but that has more to do with the  growing economy from the boom in the late 1990s.  Of course after that the unemployment rose back up to 9.3% by 2005.  In 2004-2005 the law as changed to allow for overtime hour which pretty much short-circuited the law.  This change of law to de facto raise the working week hours did not stop the unemployment rate down to 7% by 2008 before it rose again due to the economic crisis. All in all, this policy of having a 35 hour work week did not seem to affect the unemployment rate at all.