Legal amount of minimum work hours?

Would putting a legal limit on the amount of hours a person could work each week help to increase job opportunities?

• In country where unemployment is on the rise and many people work longer hours, would allowing only a limited amount of working hours per person be effective in creating job vacancies for those who have no work at all? And what would be the implications if this was to happen? (I heard they do this in France.)

• Answer:

  My understanding would be that it would increase the amount of available job positions and decrease wages, while decreasing efficiency by increasing costs associated with training, travelling, communication, and enforcing such a law. In the long run, once this decrease in productivity hits the economy, it is likely that employment will drop and average working hours increase. And even if it did increase employment, it is still immoral to ban people from working if they want to. What if they work in an industry where you need to work a lot of hours, or if they need the money for their family, or if they are working as a doctor to save a life? But I'm no expert. A better answer would include statistics of the countries that do have such laws. It is only my guess that the results would be bad.