The professor called the idea of introducing a four-day working week in the Russian Federation unrealizable.

The introduction of a four-day working week for all employees in Russia is currently an impossible task. This was announced on October 28 by Alexander Safonov, Professor of the Department of Psychology and Human Capital Development at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Mass Communications at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

"Reducing the working week in Russia to four days today is an impossible task. The reasons are quite obvious," he said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

According to the professor, in order to maintain the volume of GDP in the same criteria, it is necessary to increase labor productivity by at least 20% or attract an additional workforce of 14 million people. Safonov clarified that this should happen simultaneously in all sectors of the economy.

He added that maintaining the volume of GDP while being able to attract 20% of new staff without increasing productivity would lead to a reduction in wages, and this is impossible. In addition, the transfer of many employees to a four-day work week due to consumer demand restrictions will lead to a loss of their earnings.

According to Safonov, it will be difficult to find specialists to maintain a seven-day regime of emergency medical care and hospitals or a five-day regime of schools and kindergartens. At the same time, the expert admitted that companies from the commercial sector that are able to implement such a measure can switch to a new schedule without losing employee salaries by increasing labor productivity.

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Yaroslav Nilov, head of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans' Affairs, said on September 15 that Russia could eventually switch to a four-day working week, but this process should not be regulatory. He clarified that by reducing the number of working days, it is impossible to reduce the income of employees. At the same time, as Nilov noted, the transition should be initiated by the market itself.

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