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

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.