The History of the Four-Day Week

By Victor Hoang · Updated Oct 24, 2026

In August 2008, Utah's state government moved its workers to four ten-hour days. State office buildings closed on Fridays. Three years later the legislature voted it down.

The four-day week as a named, tested idea dates to 1970, when the management consultant Riva Poor published 4 Days, 40 Hours, a book on rearranging a standard week into four longer days. The much older roots are the weekly day of rest and the two-day weekend, which were precursors, not four-day weeks. The throughline is a split that still confuses the debate. One tradition keeps the hours and squeezes them into four days. The other cuts the hours and keeps the pay.

Utah did the first at scale: nearly 80 percent of its roughly 24,000 employees made the switch. Ten years after that, Iceland reported the opposite experiment, with shorter weeks and no loss of pay. Both stories sit inside one long argument about who decides what a normal week is.

Timeline at a Glance

The Rest Day (Antiquity-1800s)

A weekly pause is written into law and custom

Picture a village where every household stops on the same day and the fields stand empty. The Sabbath commandment is the oldest written version of that scene. In the Exodus text, the rule runs "Six days you shall labor and do all your work" and then sets a seventh day apart, extending the rest to children, servants and livestock. When the text was written is a question for scholars, so no date is given here.

The Sabbath is a precursor, and the difference matters. It fixed one day in seven for rest; it did not ask how many hours the other six should hold. Nobody was weighing four days against five.

Centuries later, European workers invented an informal version of a short week. Saint Monday, an eighteenth-century European custom of a weekly day of leisure, was an informal custom, not a policy. It belongs to the task-oriented time that shaped working life before factories sold hours by the clock, a world covered in the history of the 8-hour workday.

What it means for teams today: a rest rhythm only holds if everyone shares it. The reason a four-day week is hard to run inside a five-day world is the same reason the Sabbath needed a community: your day off is worth less when your clients, suppliers and teammates are working.

The Weekend Arrives (1870s-1938)

Saturday joins Sunday and the five-day week appears

By the 1870s a Saturday holiday was spreading, and it gradually replaced Saint Monday. The word followed: "week-end" first appears in an 1879 issue of Notes and Queries in England. In the United States, a half day on Saturday took hold in the 1920s, and the full two-day weekend followed. The shift from a six-day to a five-day week is the closest ancestor of the four-day week, because it set the template: cut one day from the schedule and see what happens to output.

The decisive employer move came from a carmaker. In March 1922 Edsel Ford told the New York Herald that a forty-hour week was practical. In September 1926 the company announced a five-day, 40-hour week for its plants, and Ford News described it as "Five working days of eight hours, with no overtimes." Opinion split. Economists debated the decision, some executives called it a bad idea and some labor advocates said it mainly benefited Ford. Kellogg's chose a different path and went for 6-hour shifts. In 1929, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a union of mostly Jewish members, became the first union to propose a five-day week. The same encyclopedia entry notes that the five-day week helped settle a clash between Sabbath and Sunday observance. For the full story of the legal 40-hour week, read the history of the 8-hour workday.

Then came a forecast that raised the stakes. In his October 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," John Maynard Keynes wrote that a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. The essay first appeared in The Nation and Athenaeum. The prediction has been quoted ever since, mostly as an example of the gap between what technology makes possible and what workplaces choose.

What it means for teams today: every shorter week in this period was an employer decision first and a law second. Ford's cut came from a company that had its reasons, and the law later caught up. If you want a four-day schedule to last, expect to win it in your own company before any rule makes it standard.

Poor's Rearranged Week (1970-1985)

A consultant shows that forty hours fit into four days

The first person to tie the idea to a book was Riva Poor, a management consultant. Her 1970 book, 4 days, 40 hours: Reporting a Revolution in Work and Leisure, is credited on that page with playing "an important role in early experimentation" with schedules other than the five-day week. In a 2010 Connecticut Law Review essay she argued that a work schedule is a management tool that can serve the specific interests of employers and employees. The essay adds that such experiments by 2010 covered nearly one-third of the US workforce.

Here is the point many modern articles miss. Poor's four-day week was a compressed week. The forty hours stayed; only the number of days changed. A Congressional Research Service report defines a compressed schedule as "a configuration of 40 workhours in other than 5 days of 8 hours each", with four ten-hour days as the standard example. That is not the same as the 32-hour, full-pay weeks tested decades later.

Government followed the private sector. After nearly a decade of congressional consideration, the Federal Employees' Flexible and Compressed Work Schedules Act was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, as an experimental program. P.L. 99-196 made the program permanent in the federal sector in 1985. The compressed week had become a scheduling option on the menu, not a movement.

What it means for teams today: a four-by-ten schedule solves a commuting and scheduling problem, not a workload one. If your team is already stretched, adding two hours to each of four days moves the strain to Thursday afternoon. Compress the week only when the work and the people can carry the longer days.

The Utah Experiment (2008-2011)

Four tens save energy but close the office on Fridays

The story picks up again in Utah. In August 2008, Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. moved state employees onto Monday-to-Thursday schedules. According to Governing magazine, 18,255 of about 24,000 employees switched, with essential services such as universities, courts, prisons and law enforcement exempted. The stated goals were lower energy bills and fewer commutes. Initial estimates put energy savings at about $3 million.

The early results were mixed. The same Governing piece reported that half of 101 tracked large state buildings cut energy use by 10 to 20 percent or more, and that paid overtime fell about 14 percent. A year in, an internal analysis cited by Knowledge at Wharton found state energy consumption down 13 percent, with surveys showing most employees liked the schedule. But the savings fell short of the $3 million forecast, closer to $1 million, as HuffPost reported.

Then politics caught up. Representative Mike Noel sponsored a bill to restore five-day service. Governor Gary Herbert vetoed it, and the legislature overrode the veto. Lawmakers said Friday closures inconvenienced residents and businesses, and Noel said of the schedule that it just didn't work very well. Some workers also struggled with childcare because the workday ran until 6 p.m. Herbert told staff to prepare to return to five days after Labor Day 2011.

The Utah case is the cleanest early lesson. Staff liked it, but customers did not, and customers had votes. A schedule that saves the employer money but removes access for the public is easy to reverse.

What it means for teams today: before you move to four days, decide who loses access and how you will cover them. A rotating Friday rota or a longer phone window can protect the people you serve. A closed office is a promise broken for them.

The Pilot Years (2015-2022)

Reduced hours with full pay become a research subject

Unlike Utah, the next wave cut hours and left pay alone. Iceland led, driven by union campaigns. In March 2015, Reykjavík City Council began a trial in two workplaces, a service center and a child protection service, chosen because of their high stress. Sixty-six staff shortened their week from 40 hours to 35 or 36. The Icelandic government began a second trial in 2017 with about 440 staff. Over time the two trials grew to include more than 2,500 workers, over 1 percent of the national workforce. The 2021 report by Autonomy and Alda says productivity and service provision stayed the same or improved in most workplaces, and that the trials stayed revenue neutral for the city and the government. It also reports that, by June 2021, roughly 86 percent of Iceland's working population was on contracts that cut hours or gave a right to ask for it.

Then the private sector caught up. In March and April 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust company, ran an eight-week trial across its 240-person business that gave every employee a day off each week at full pay. Professor Jarrod Haar of AUT ran the quantitative research and Dr Helen Delaney of the University of Auckland Business School the qualitative research. The company's media release says leaders reported broadly no change in output, and that Haar found job attitudes among the highest he had seen in his New Zealand data. That evidence comes from the company's own release, so it shows what a willing employer saw in a short trial, not a neutral verdict.

The founder, Andrew Barnes, turned the trial into a cause. In 2019, he and Charlotte Lockhart founded 4 Day Week Global, which promotes a trademarked "100:80:100" model: 100 percent of pay for 80 percent of the time while maintaining 100 percent of output.

The largest test came in the UK. From June to December 2022, 61 companies and around 2,900 workers took part, with Boston College handling the quantitative research and the University of Cambridge the qualitative research. By the end, 56 of the 61 companies (92 percent) were continuing and 18 had made the change permanent. Revenue stayed broadly flat, rising 1.4 percent on average when weighted by company size. And 71 percent of employees reported reduced burnout, 39 percent were less stressed and staff leaving participating companies fell by 57 percent. These are self-reported measures from firms that chose to join, so they say more about what is possible for willing employers than about every business.

What it means for teams today: the pilots share a design feature that any team can copy. Each had a defined period, measures set in advance and the freedom for teams to redesign their own work. Perpetual Guardian's Delaney found staff designed their own changes, from automating manual processes to cutting non-work internet use. Ask the team how to protect output before you promise the day off.

The Policy Turn (2022-present)

Governments write the four-day week into rules

The question moved from firms to legislatures. In September 2022, the Belgian federal parliament approved a labor deal that lets employees ask for a four-day week. It is a right to ask, with limits: the total weekly working time stays the same, a request covers at most six months and can be renewed, and an employer can refuse with a reasoned answer. The advice firm summarizing it notes the final text should be checked, since its article described a draft.

Tokyo went another way. In December 2024, Governor Yuriko Koike announced that the metropolitan government would let employees choose to take three days off each week, starting in April 2025. It is an option, not a requirement, and it was framed as a response to Japan's low fertility rate and to an overtime culture that pushes many women to choose between a career and a family. Here the shorter week was a tool for a population problem, not a productivity experiment.

Both examples show where the history now stands. The word "four-day week" covers at least three different deals: compress the same hours into four days, cut the hours and keep the pay, or let each person choose. Each solves a different problem. The 8-hour workday and the remote work stories show the same pattern: a number that once looked fixed turns out to be negotiable.

What it means for teams today: name the deal before you debate it. Teams that say "four-day week" and mean different things will argue past each other. Write down whether hours, pay, days off and coverage are changing, and which of them stay put.

Key People

Key Facts

• Riva Poor's 1970 book 4 Days, 40 Hours is credited by its author with helping early experiments in alternative work weeks.
• A compressed schedule is 40 hours in other than five 8-hour days, such as four 10-hour days.
• Utah moved 18,255 of about 24,000 state employees to four ten-hour days in 2008, then reversed course in 2011.
• Iceland's trials grew to more than 2,500 workers, over 1 percent of its workforce, with pay unchanged.
• Perpetual Guardian's 2018 trial covered 240 staff over eight weeks at full pay.
• In the 2022 UK pilot, 56 of 61 companies were continuing afterwards and 71 percent of employees reported reduced burnout.

The Pattern Behind the History

This is our synthesis of the timeline, not a published model. We call it The Four Deals: every four-day week in this story is one of four bargains, and each fails or holds for a different reason.

1. The rest day. One day in seven is fixed for everyone, so the rhythm is shared. It holds because the whole community keeps it.
2. The weekend. An employer cuts a day to win loyalty and output, as Ford did, and the law follows later. It holds when the business case holds.
3. The compressed week. The hours stay, the days shrink, as in Poor's book and Utah. It saves commuting and energy but can strain people and fail on public access.
4. The reduced week. The hours and the days both shrink with no pay cut, as in Iceland, Perpetual Guardian and the UK. It holds when teams redesign the work and measure the result.

What It Teaches Teams Today

The history gives a practical order of operations. First, decide which of the four deals you mean. A compressed week and a reduced week need different promises, and your team will hear whichever one they prefer.

Second, define the output before the schedule. Every serious pilot above had measures in place before the first day off, and the ones that lasted had teams that redesigned their own work. Third, protect the people outside your team. Utah's schedule was liked by staff and reversed anyway, because the public lost its Fridays.

If you manage a team, a short test works. Pick one period, write the output you will protect, decide how customers will reach you on the off day and ask the team what they would stop doing to make room. The deeper pattern also shows in burnout culture, where overwork persists because nobody wrote down the real cost, and in how AI tools can raise the pace instead of lightening it. For the longer view of how work has been counted, start with the history of productivity, the history of knowledge work and the productivity paradox. To plan your own days, see time management. Two companion stories cover workplace communication and workplace wellbeing and burnout.