Robert Reich Warns: The AI-Powered Four-Day Workweek Is a Lie — Here’s What’s Really Coming

In a blistering new essay, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich has torn apart the Silicon Valley fantasy that artificial intelligence will usher in an era of leisure, shorter workweeks, and universal prosperity. According to Reich, the much-hyped four-day workweek powered by AI isn’t a gift to workers—it’s a Trojan horse designed to slash wages and deepen inequality.

While tech CEOs like Zoom’s Eric Yuan and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon have been making headlines predicting that AI will normalize three- and four-day workweeks, Reich calls their vision “pure rubbish.” His argument cuts to the core of a growing economic crisis: workers have been losing ground for decades, and AI threatens to accelerate that decline rather than reverse it.

The Productivity-Pay Gap: Workers Have Been Getting Shafted for Decades

Reich’s central point hinges on what economists call the productivity-pay gap. Since the 1970s, American workers have watched their productivity soar—output per worker has more than doubled—while wages have remained stubbornly flat when adjusted for inflation. In other words, companies have been capturing virtually all the gains from increased efficiency, leaving workers with crumbs.

“If AI takes over their current work,” Reich writes, “most workers will probably get poorer or have to take additional jobs to maintain their current pay.”

This isn’t theoretical. The evidence is already mounting in 2025. Full-time job growth has been “almost nonexistent,” according to recent reports, while the number of Americans turning to gig work continues to surge. Low-wage workers are facing worsening affordability, with wage declines hitting those who can least afford it.

The Two-Tier Society Is Already Here

Rather than creating an age of abundance where most people no longer worry about money, Reich argues that new technologies have contributed to a stark two-tiered society: a relatively few with extraordinary wealth and a vast number of people barely making it.

The former labor secretary’s warning is particularly stark because it challenges the dominant narrative in tech circles. While executives paint pictures of AI-driven utopia, the reality for most workers looks more like a dystopian race to the bottom—where automation doesn’t eliminate work but instead eliminates decent pay and job security.

It’s About Power, Not Technology

At the end of the day, Reich says, “it comes down to who has the power.” And right now, that power resides overwhelmingly with corporations and their shareholders, not with the workers whose labor creates value.

The four-day workweek, if it arrives, will likely come with four days’ worth of pay. The three-day workweek will come with three days’ worth. The math is brutal and simple: less time working equals less money earned, unless workers have the collective power to demand otherwise.

The Gig Economy Is the Future Unless We Change Course

The rise of gig work isn’t an accident or a lifestyle choice for most participants—it’s a survival strategy in an economy where stable, well-paying jobs are disappearing. As AI continues to automate routine tasks and companies push for “efficiency,” more workers will find themselves piecing together multiple part-time or gig jobs just to maintain their current standard of living.

This isn’t the liberation from labor that AI optimists promise. It’s the opposite: a future where workers are more precarious, more disposable, and more dependent on the whims of algorithms and corporate cost-cutting.

What This Means for the Future of Work

Reich’s warning should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who believes that technological progress automatically translates to human progress. History shows that technology is a tool—and like any tool, it can be used to build or to destroy, to liberate or to oppress.

Without significant changes to labor laws, corporate governance, and the distribution of economic power, the AI revolution will likely follow the same pattern as previous technological shifts: massive gains for those at the top, and increasing hardship for everyone else.

The choice isn’t between a four-day workweek and a five-day workweek. It’s between an economy that works for everyone and one that works only for the privileged few. And right now, Reich’s analysis suggests we’re heading in the wrong direction.

AI job apocalypse, four-day workweek scam, Robert Reich warning, productivity-pay gap, gig economy explosion, AI layoffs permanent, tech billionaires lying, workers getting screwed, economic inequality 2025, AI automation exploitation, wage stagnation crisis, corporate greed AI, future of work dystopia, labor rights disappearing, economic power concentration, AI replacing jobs not creating them, working class squeezed, Silicon Valley deception, real AI impact workers, economic reality check

,