Millennial men working shorter work hours have contributed to labour shortages equivalent to 310,000 fewer people in employment, official figures show.
The typical hours men worked dropped from 36.3 hours in 2019 to 32.5 hours in 2020, amid a general picture of decline over the past 25 years.
It comes as a major blow to Rishi Sunak’s pledge to grow the economy, which has been stagnant since the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008.
Working hours for 2022 were 35.3 hours, the most recent year available, the Office for National Statistics said.
The ONS said the difference was equivalent to 310,000 fewer people in the work place, despite the changes being relatively small.
The only male age group to see higher working hours since 2019 was those over the age of 65. They saw hours increase by 0.01 hours a week between 2019 and 2022.
This was reflected among women in the same age group, who saw a 0.02 hours per week rise.
Millennial men are working shorter hours while women have increased their average weekly hours, ONS figures show
The ONS said: ‘There were positive shift effects for people aged 65 years and over of both sexes.
‘However, this age group tends to work relatively low average hours compared with the others and employment rates are also relatively low.’ Women’s working hours have slowly increased over the same time frame but increases were insufficient in offsetting the fall for men.
In 1998 women typically worked 26.5 hours which rose to 27.9 hours in 2022. Women also saw working hours plummet in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
The proportion of full-time female workers could indicate greater flexibility in working arrangements, the ONS said.
There was a post-pandemic rise of 580,000 older people who were outside the workforce, which was ‘significant in terms of its quantitative impact on labour supply’.
Small declines in the hours worked by younger people under the age of 25 (0.16 hours a week) were attributed to education.
The ONS said: ‘Negative shift effects for both men and women under 25 years of age probably reflect higher rates of participation in further and higher education.’ Louise Murphy, an economist at think-tank the Resolution Foundation, said there was no single reason for the declining working week among men.
She told the Financial Times recent research shower men choosing shorter hours if they were still able to pay their bills as it was ‘the only way to get work-life balance’.
‘Working hours are just as important as economic inactivity [in explaining] the labour supply and growth over the last few years,’ she added to the newspaper.