Bestselling author leading sociologist and economist Juliet Schor makes the case for a
four-day work week persuasively showing how this model can address major challenges such as
burnout AI and the climate crisis and how employees companies and governments can work
together to make it a reality. Around the world long hours and intense pressure are taking
their toll. When the pandemic hit in 2020 work-induced stress and burnout skyrocketed. Many
reached a breaking point. Now three-quarters of the world’s employees are disengaged and
struggling including in the US and Canada where half are experiencing high levels of daily
stress. Our current work culture the five-day forty-hours-a-week model—which has gone
unchanged for nearly a century—is failing. But a remedial countertrend has emerged: the
four-day work week. Kickstarter Bolt Basecamp ThredUp and hundreds of other employers have
eliminated the fifth day of work successfully figuring out how to maintain productivity while
seeing remarkable improvements in employee well-being. Hiring is easier and fewer people are
quitting. These results are global. Working a four-day week people feel energized capable
and more optimistic about their lives—and their jobs. Four Days a Week is the first large-scale
study of this trend. Juliet Schor—an expert who has researched and written about work for more
than four decades beginning with her New York Times bestseller The Overworked American in
1992—shares her pioneering analysis of the benefits of a shorter work week how companies can
achieve them why the concept has taken so long to emerge and gain acceptance and why doing so
will help a company’s employees and its bottom line. The book is a blueprint for implementing a
change that once seemed radical but is now within reach.
