articleworld4u
Photo: CharlotteLockhart, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the trials so far, yes: people who work fewer hours for the same pay report less burnout and better health, and most employers keep the change. The trials are voluntary, and some headlines claim more than they show.
In 1930 the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, within a century, rising productivity would let people work about fifteen hours a week. He was right that output per hour would climb. The working week did not follow. Australia's legal standard for full-time work is still 38 hours.
Long hours carry a cost. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimate that working 55 hours or more a week caused 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016. Against a 35 to 40 hour week, it carries an estimated 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease.
Reykjavík City Council and the national government ran trials covering more than 2,500 workers, about 1% of Iceland's workforce. Most moved from 40 hours a week to 35 or 36, on the same pay.
The researchers who reviewed the trials reported that output held steady or improved in most workplaces, and that workers felt less stressed and less at risk of burnout. Unions then negotiated shorter hours, and 86% of the workforce either moved to them or gained the right to.
Read the fine print, though. Iceland cut one to three hours a week in 61 of the 66 workplaces, not a whole day. The later union agreements cut less still. The sociologist Anthony Veal points out that there were no proper control groups in the service workplaces, and that volunteers keen to keep the change may have worked harder to prove it. "Iceland proved the four-day week" goes further than the evidence.
From June to December 2022, 61 UK companies and about 2,900 staff moved to a four-day week on full pay. Researchers from Cambridge University and Boston College measured the results.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Companies still on a four-day week after the trial | 56 of 61 |
| Companies making it permanent | 18 |
| Revenue over the trial | roughly flat, up 1.4% on average |
| Staff reporting less burnout | 71% |
| Resignations, against a similar earlier period | down 57% |
| Sick days, against a similar earlier period | down 65% |
Companies volunteered, and many were small and office-based, so the result says more about firms that want to try than about every workplace.
The strongest study so far appeared in Nature Human Behaviour in 2025. It followed 2,896 employees across 141 organisations in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US, before and after a six-month move to a four-day week without a pay cut. It also tracked 12 comparison companies that did not change.
The gains came partly from people sleeping better, feeling less tired and feeling more able to do their jobs. The organisations also reorganised their work before the trial began, to cut wasted time. That is the lesson. Cutting hours works when the work changes too, not when five days are squeezed into four.
| Solid | Not yet shown |
|---|---|
| Wellbeing, burnout and sleep improve | That every industry can do it, such as shift work, care and manufacturing |
| Most volunteer employers keep it | Effects over many years |
| Output holds in the firms that try it | What happens when it is required rather than chosen |
In big German firms, staff elect half the board. Since 1976 that's the law. What it changed, what it cost, and why Australia has nothing like it.
Photo: Roger Wollstadt, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Keynes predicted a 15-hour week by 2030. David Graeber blamed pointless jobs. What the studies found, and why the paperwork still matters.
Photo: author unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Since 1987 the workforce doubled while manager, program and HR jobs grew four times over and secretaries halved. The ABS numbers, and why it happens.
Photo: Missionedit, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
.jpg){kind=link}
