Raising the Overtime Premium and Reducing the Standard Workweek: Short-Run Impacts on U.S. Manufacturing

Abstract

A nine-factor input model is developed to estimate the monthly demand for employment, capital, and weekly hours per worker/workweek in U.S. Manufacturing. The labor inputs correspond to production and non-production workers disaggregated by overtime and non-overtime employment. Policy simulations are conducted to examine the short-run effects on the monthly growth rates for employment, labor earnings, capital usage, and the workweek from either a) raising the overtime premium to double-time, or b) reducing the standard workweek to 35 hours. Although the growth rate policy effects are heterogeneous across disaggregated labor input categories, on aver- age both policy changes exhibit negative effects on the growth rates of industry-wide employment, earnings, and non-labor input usage. The growth rate of the workweek is virtually unaffected by raising the overtime premium but is negatively impacted by reducing the standard work week.