Four Days a Week
Book

Four Days a Week

The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter

Juliet B. Schor
HarperBusiness, 2025
Buy the book

Read, Listen, or Discuss

Amazon Kindle  Discuss
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

9

getAbstract Rating

  • Innovative
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

In this data-driven study, sociologist and economist Juliet Schor reveals how a four-day workweek helps companies reduce burnout, improve employee retention, and maintain productivity across diverse industries. Drawing from large-scale trials and decades of labor research, Schor explains how this model addresses the pressures of modern work from AI disruptions to ecological strain. She outlines how employers, employees, and policymakers can collaborate to implement shorter schedules without sacrificing output or profitability.

Summary

The four-day workweek provides a practical solution to chronic overwork.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, American workers struggled to keep up with the competing demands of paid employment and unpaid labor at home. Unlike other wealthy nations, including France and Germany, that have reduced working hours since the 1950s, while boosting productivity, the United States remains stuck in a dangerously outdated work mode. Structural barriers, such as weak labor protections and health insurance tied to employment, are partly to blame for this state of affairs. However, rigid workplace norms also play an important role in keeping American workers time-crunched.

The United States’ longstanding “ideal worker norm,” which rewards those who demonstrate apparent endless devotion to work, regardless of personal cost, has been on a collision course with personal responsibilities since World War II. Though working hours had been declining leading up to the war, in its aftermath, they plateaued. Then, in the 1970s, men’s and women’s working hours began increasing steadily. Between 1989 and 2016, American adults added ...

About the Author

Economist and Boston College professor of sociology Juliet Schor also wrote The Overworked American; After the Gig; and The Overspent American.

Comment on this summary