Tokyo offers 4-day work weeks for young couples – for extra time to give birth

Oh, baby!

Tokyo is offering its workers a four-day work week in a bid to boost the city’s birth rate.

Governor Yuriko Koike recently announced that city government employees will be given the option to have a three-day weekend starting in April 2025.

Another new policy will allow parents with elementary-age children to work early in exchange for a pay cut.

The revolutionary policies in the world’s largest city are efforts to encourage couples to have children as Japan continues to report a record low birth rate for the 16th year in a row.

The number of babies born in Tokyo decreased by more than 15% between 2012 and 2022.

Tokyo’s four-day experiment comes after many studies and efforts have shown that a shorter work week leads to a long list of benefits for a company and its employees.

Similar programs have already been established in other areas of Japan.

“We will review working styles — with flexibility, ensuring that no one has to give up their career because of life events such as childbirth or childcare,” Koike said in a policy speech at the Metropolitan Assembly of Tokyo in the fourth. regular session, NBC reported.

“Now is the time for Tokyo to take the initiative to protect and improve the lives, livelihoods and economy of our people during these challenging times for the nation,” Koike said.

In 2023, Japan’s fertility rate dropped to 1.2 expected children per woman over her lifetime; Experts say the nation needs this number to reach at least 2.1 for the population to remain stable.

Experts believe the decline in births is partly attributable to Japan’s work-intensive culture. The country even has a term for “death from overwork” – karoshi — which often forces women to choose between career and family.

The country has the largest gender gap in labor force participation of any high-income country – 55% for women and 72% for men last year, according to the World Bank.

As more Japanese women are increasingly choosing to focus on their careers instead of their families, the country has struggled with a labor shortage and the world’s highest ratio of elderly people.

To combat the ongoing problem, Japan has offered cash incentives for larger families, tax breaks, created more daycare centers and even released a government-sponsored dating app that asks users to promise they’re using it with purpose of marriage.