Is America Ready for a Four-Day Work Week?
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What are the main arguments for a four‑day work week in the United States?
People who feel they need to work those long hours do it because they're worried about losing their jobs, not because there is somehow something inherent in our culture that makes us workaholics.
All of these schedules, every single thing is already built on the five-day workweek. America simply isn't yet ready for it.
Okay, who wants a four-day workweek? A lot of people who work, I think I can safely say, people who could use some extra free time in a lot of different ways to be with their kids, to take some classes, to pursue a hobby, and maybe just to chill. Probably most of us would like that, and maybe our families would too. I'm John Donvan. This is Open to Debate, and get ready for an argument about the four-day workweek. are two debaters, Juliet Shore, an economist who has a famous TED talk out there about the four-day workweek, and Joanne Lipman, a journalist who, in her storied career, has been both a worker and a boss. They disagree, not on the appeal of a four-day workweek. In fact, both of them say It would be a very nice thing.
But while one believes that we may already be moving in that direction and quite quickly, the other says it's not going to happen anytime soon, maybe ever in the United States. Here is our debate question. Is America ready for a four-day workweek? Juliette, Joanne, welcome to Open to Debate.
Thank you. Great to be here.
And Juliette, you go first. We are ready for your opener. Is America ready for a four-day workweek?
Thanks. Yes, definitely ready. 86 years ago, the U.S. officially reduced the workweek to 40 hours. And that came after two decades of a kind of gradual evolution to go from six to five days. Since that time, the average worker's productivity has increased 400%. Meanwhile, contrary to predictions, my research has shown that in the 1970s, hours of work in the U.S. began to rise, and they pretty much have continued going up since then. Americans work far longer than people in other rich countries by, in some cases, more than 400 hours a year. And we have the world's highest levels of stress. Many workers are burning out and leaving their jobs. Beginning in 2022, hundreds of companies began a landmark experiment to shift to a four-day, 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay.
My team led the research for these trials, and we now have evidence from more than 400 companies in 15 countries and more than 13,000 employees, including many, many in the United States. Our findings are powerful. We have more than 20 measures of well-being, and they all show statistically significant improvements, many of them quite large. For example, 70% of all employees score lower on the burnout scale after six months on the four-day week schedule. Participants have lower stress, better physical and mental health, a better emotional life, less work family pressure, and many other positive well-being gains. Now, the impetus for the four-day week so far has come from employers who understand that their employees need more time off and that they can reorganize their workplaces to make up the lost productivity of that extra day off.
Our data show that employers are very satisfied with the ability of their people to maintain productivity, and many report that both productivity and product quality or service quality have risen with the four-day week. Other performance metrics such as revenue, quits, absenteeism also show improvement, and of course, cost savings. At the one-year mark, we found that 90% of participating companies are still on the four-day week. Across many types of industries, types of companies, kinds of people, the findings are strikingly similar. Employees and management are getting great results with the four-day week. The four-day week is a game changer. We have people writing to us about how they can get pregnant now, either for reasons of health or stress or time.
Fathers who say they can be part of their kids' lives. People getting off their anxiety meds. People with disabilities now able to keep a job because of the four-day week.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What are the main arguments for a four‑day work week in the United States?
0:00–8:59
2
How does Juliet Schor’s research show the impact of a 32‑hour week on employee well‑being?
8:59–30:57
3
Why does Joanne Lipman argue that America isn’t ready for a four‑day work week?
30:57–52:20
4
What evidence do the debaters cite about productivity and cost‑savings under a four‑day schedule?
52:20–1:01:58