Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. .听
In听the winter of 1926, thousands of garment workers, mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe, poured into the streets of Manhattan after voting to strike. They were mostly furriers who sewed and finished luxury products like mink coats and everyday hats and blankets. On the front lines were young women. They marched in their stark white shop dresses, with red sashes bearing the name of their union across their chests. The strikers demanded a 40-hour workweek: 鈥淓ight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what you will.鈥�
By June, the struggle was over. Fur and leather companies agreed to institute a five-day, 40-hour workweek, in an era of six-day, 50-hour-plus weeks, as described in contemporaneous accounts in The New York Times and other publications. It was considered a first in the United States鈥攁 guaranteed 40-hour week written into a major collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, that year, Henry Ford ushered in the 40-hour week for his Ford Motor Company workers, acting on his own initiative.
Juliet Schor
Many thought this was just the beginning. The British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that we鈥檇 be working just 15 hours a week by 2030, thanks largely to technologies that made it increasingly possible for workers to produce more in less time. It was not to be.
One hundred years after Ford and the fur workers, America is still hewing to the 40-hour standard. Full-time workers are clocking an average of around 42 hours a week, according to federal data. Is the goal of a shorter workweek as elusive as ever? Hardly, says Juliet Schor, an economist and sociology professor at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences.
She is the author of , released last year. In the book, she unveils findings from the largest-ever study of its kind, involving 245 companies that piloted a four-day, 32-hour workweek鈥攚ith no pay cut. Friday is the preferred day off, having already become a different and slower day for many organizations.
Schor led the international research team, and her findings (using data gathered from 2022 to 2025) have stirred听conversations in the media, politics, and industry. But what would scholars from a leading school of management say about all this? In interviews, Carroll School of Management professors said the whole question warrants a rethink for multiple reasons, including the transformational changes that AI may bring to the workplace.
Paul Romer, the Seidner University Professor and a Nobel Prize鈥搘inning economist, says a 32-hour week wouldn鈥檛 be a break with the past so much as a resumption of the long-run historical trend. That is, the downward curve from 60鈥�80 hours a week during the late 19th century to where things stand now. "We just got kind of stuck on a plateau," he says of the 40-hour week that became enshrined in federal law in 1940. "And we might well be finally at a point where its makes sense to push through and try something different."听
Paul Romer
Romer, who teaches in the Seidner Department of Finance, echoes the social pioneers who championed the 40-hour week for humanistic reasons鈥攅ight hours a day 鈥渇or what you will.鈥� He says, 鈥淎s a society, what we should be pursuing is quality of life and satisfaction. And we can see [from Schor鈥檚 work] that when someone is working less time, they鈥檙e able to live a more satisfied life.鈥�
He and other Carroll School experts agree that Schor has demonstrated some clear benefits of a trimmed workweek. These include findings that employees are sleeping better, exercising more, and spending more time with family, among other measures of well-being. In addition, the professors see business reasons for enacting the four-day week, which include significantly lower levels of employee burnout and costly turnover.
And there was no loss of productivity, according to Schor鈥檚 research. Companies, by their own assessments, were usually able to squeeze their existing levels of productivity into the 32-hour week, often by clamping down on long meetings. Fewer meetings freed up creative workers for uninterrupted focus time, which can bolster productivity.
Carroll School scholars do question how far this movement can go鈥攈ow many companies, especially larger ones, would follow the full-pay-for-less-time model. (The pilots have skewed toward smaller and midsize firms, one of the best known of which is Kickstarter, the global crowdsourcing platform.) Faculty members also have mixed assessments of whether AI would deliver us the added leisure, perhaps by paring down time-consuming tasks, thus allowing workers to complete their week in four days.
During the pilots, companies sculpted their four-day week in different ways to make it work. Many arranged for at least some employee availability on the off day; there were firms that suspended the time off during weeks with a holiday.
Most organizations adopted what has been dubbed the 100-80-100 model: 100 percent of the pay, 80 percent of the worktime, and 100 percent of the productivity. The latter percentage suggests there鈥檚 enough fat in the system for employees to accomplish what they do now in four days. That rings true on a personal level to those like Professor Gergana Nenkov. She recalls that when she started having kids, she quickly figured out ways to do more in less time. She declined (optional) meetings, didn鈥檛 fuss over her inbox, and spent fewer hours searching and scrolling.
鈥淚 wanted to get home to my kids, so that was a huge incentive for me,鈥� Nenkov says. Likewise, she adds, employees of those participating companies had a similarly strong incentive to boost productivity. 鈥淚 do believe employees will perform miracles if you reward them with听an extra day off,鈥� she says. The abridged week also serves as a means of 鈥渂rand differentiation鈥� for companies looking to attract exceptional talent, especially among younger workers more appreciative of work-life balance, the marketing professor says.
Mary Ellen Carter
Basically, companies reorganize their work processes to expunge the least productive activities. Teams will impose a 30-minute limit on meetings or use a messaging platform like Slack rather than chat on the phone. 鈥淢eetings are a prime target,鈥� she gave a few years ago, setting off murmurs of agreement in the audience. 鈥淵es, I see everyone nodding,鈥� she responded.
Not every company looks to wring out inefficiencies. Some are running pretty lean already but suffer from excessive burnout and costly employee turnover, which they hope to ease with less work time. The savings can be substantial, says Professor and Joseph L. Sweeney Chair in Accounting Mary Ellen Carter. She points to participants in the study, including Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, a high-pressure (unidentified) advertising firm, and the M鈥檛ucci鈥檚 restaurant chain in New Mexico. They had turnover rates of 40 to 50 percent and chopped them down to roughly zero.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 quite significant,鈥� Carter says, underlining the costs of recruitment and other disruptions related to turnover. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not necessarily a productivity gain but it becomes a financial gain.鈥�
There are operational questions. Say you鈥檙e a consultant and your four-day week is over鈥斺�淪ometimes clients want to speak with their own people, not a stand-in,鈥� says Professor of Business Analytics and William S. McKiernan 鈥�78 Family Faculty Fellow Nan Liu. 鈥淗ow to keep your clients happy? How to do business in this new work schedule? It's a challenge." Liu is quick to note that some companies tweaked the model by, for instance, turning the off day into an on-call day.听
“ We assume more hours are always better, but they鈥檙e not. You鈥檙e not necessarily productive in those long hours. ”
There鈥檚 a less answerable question that Schor herself raises: If firms can boost productivity through reorganization, why don鈥檛 they just do that, without granting the extra day off? In other words, Carter asks, 鈥淲ho gets to capture the gains from greater productivity?鈥�
Professor Jamie Ladge, who chairs the Management and Organization Department, adds, 鈥淏ig companies would have to share those gains with their workers versus the shareholders. It鈥檚 a little hard to picture.鈥� She says some will undoubtedly make that leap, but stubborn notions about 鈥�the ideal worker鈥� might get in the way. Ladge explains, 鈥淲e assume more hours are always better, but they鈥檙e not. You鈥檙e not necessarily productive in those long hours.鈥�
The same question applies to AI鈥檚 effect on jobs (leaving aside dystopian visions of AI obliterating human work). Technology is allowing people to do more in less time by automating tasks, as it has always done. Might companies translate those time savings into a shorter workweek, with or without full pay?
Sam Ransbotham
Professor of Business Analytics and David J. Mastrocola Dean鈥檚 Faculty Fellow Sam Ransbotham says, 鈥淯sing AI seems likely to boost productivity and reduce routine work, making a four-day week economically viable.鈥� Viable, but not necessarily what companies choose to do. And there鈥檚 a cultural question: Will workers and the broader society even want to limit productive hours to four days? In the study, few workers took on second jobs after their companies adopted the lighter week. Instead, they did things like volunteer or go to the gym more often. What would happen outside the gentle environment of people and organizations aspiring to greater leisure is hard to say.
鈥淧eople and culture are slow to change,鈥� Ransbotham says. 鈥淎t first, I expect that people will use the time savings to do more, not reduce work time. People are competitive.鈥� Yet, we know from innovations like remote work that change happens, he says. 鈥淧eople and organizations can eventually shift.鈥�
Schor is optimistic. For one thing, she鈥檚 not so sure companies would easily reap the productivity gains without offering something in return to workers. She points out that in the trials, the four-day week served as a 鈥渇orcing mechanism鈥� for many of the time-saving efficiencies, meaning that these gains came about because of the shorter week. Following the six-month pilots, scarcely any companies reverted to the five-day week.
Still, she says, 鈥淲e鈥檙e not claiming that this could work for everyone right now.鈥� Schor does predict that more and bigger companies will climb onto the bandwagon soon, partly for the 鈥渂rand differentiation鈥� cited by Nenkov. But she hints that a larger transformation might have to wait for something like the social consensus that materialized when Congress enacted the last reduction in work hours鈥�86 years ago.
