Can the US reduce the working days to 4 instead of 5 ?

32 comments

  1. It’s up to individual workplaces what they want the schedule to be. My wife works 4 ten hour days at her job.

  3. The US has set a standard working week of 40 hours (essentially, there’s more details than that, but for the sake of discussion it’ll work).

    There is nothing preventing any employee and employer for establishing a 4 day work week or any other combination you so choose.

  4. The “US” as in the US government? Theoretically the government could define a full working week as 35 hours (or some other number) and any number above that would be “overtime” – this generally only impacts the segment of workers who are employed and paid hourly, as opposed to being paid a set salary. Currently you are not entitled to overtime pay until you work more than 40 hours in a week.

    Employers generally have a lot of discretion to set their workers’ hours and pay, as long as they are following the law. Any employer with employees who are salaried (as opposed to hourly) could generally establish whatever working schedule they want to. Some business do encourage employees to work shorter weeks or fewer hours.

    While the 4 day work week has a lot of fans in the US, I don’t know how politically likely it is that we will be redefining our wage and hour laws anytime soon.

  6. Sure, but that’s an individual business decision, not something that can or should be enacted through law.

  7. Some jobs already do, depending upon your industry. It would all come down to how feasible it would be for your position to be done in 4 days as opposed to 5

  9. Ehh….kinda?

    “5 working days” is not a legal concept now in a nationwide sense though it is a cultural convention and a default for contracts.

    What we have is an hours/week threshold that counts as full time, with various mandates rhat come with full time status like benefits, overtime eligibility for non-exempt positions and so on.

    That doesn’t care if you’re working 5/8, 4/10 or 3/13.

    So what we could do is lower the full time threshold to be consistent with a 4/8 schedule as default.

    Clarity edit:
    it appears the most common threshold currently, for the IRS and ACA for example, is 30 hours/week or 130/month. It is important to know that each act or agency can define this threshold separately, though they’ve converged on that for the most part. There is no all encompassing federal definition of “full time employee”.

    I also failed to mention employer thresholds. Employers with less than 50 total employees are exempt from most regulatory things which would be relevant to a concept of “full time”.

  10. Be more specific. Outside of a few states, the 40 hour workweek is in place because for any non-exempt job, anything over 40 hours in a workweek is overtime. A few states have daily overtime requirement. So are you talking about:

    * 4 10-hour days vs 5 8-hour days? That’s perfectly legal and up to the organization. My husband works 4 10 hour days.
    * 4 8-hour days? Again companies and individuals are free to establish this as a schedule if they want.

    There’s nothing that currently & legally requires a 40 hour workweek. Plenty of places have 35 or 37 hour workweeks. 30 hours is the minimum hours to qualify as full time from a health insurance and tax perspective.

    In fact, you are free to try to negotiate this with your employer if you wish. They aren’t required to accommodate that schedule, but you can try.

  11. In my field we get to work four 10hr days in the summer. Right now I work four 9hr days and Friday I’m off early which is pretty neat imo.

  12. Legally? I don’t think the government could directly mandate that. I suppose Congress could amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to reduce the standard non-overtime 40-hour week to 32, which could encourage many employers to operate 4-day weeks. But the government can’t just say “the weekend is now three days.”

  17. I’ve worked 4 tens and 3 twelves at another job and it was fine. It’s easy to do that with shift work.

    Now my job has me talking with people all over the country in different trades so they would basically all have to decide to work just 4 days first before I could follow suit.

  18. Interesting topic-

    My Dad is a retired police officer – very high-ranking in a major, Capital-City Department, etc. – and at some point when I was a kid, his Department was one of the first in the USA to adopt a “4-On/4-Off” schedule … To try to make it easy to understand – let’s say this week, he is going to work: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday, 10-hours each day (Instead of 9-5, it would be something like 9AM-7PM etc.) – then he would have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, & Monday off … then work Tuesday-Friday, and have off Saturday-Tuesday off ; then Wed-Sat work, Sun-Wed off, etc.

    It was basically forced on them – the City and the Police Unions had been negotiating a new contract, but a new Mayor was elected, and even in the early 90s, he was pretty plainly anti-Police, and someone in his inner-circle told him to insist on this schedule , and use it as a bargaining chip – the Police Union was asking for something (I can’t rightly remember at all what it was, to be honest) – so the City/Politicians DEMANDED they adopt this new 4-On/4-Off schedule in exchange … and I guess the cops voted to accept it.

    Soon enough, the Police Officers decided it was *The Best Thing EVER* … they absolutely LOVED IT … who in the world wouldn’t want to work 4-day work-weeks, WITH *FOUR DAYS OFF* – and the trade-off was staying an extra 2 Hours a shift. They *LOVED IT* … there was even friendly bantering about, was it better to have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday off – in a row – OR, Saturday-Sunday-Monday-Tuesday etc.

    I have no problems whatsoever reducing the workweek to 4 days. What I have a problem with is , the massive companies like the Tech companies out in CA that allowed a lot of remote-working, which was thoroughly doubled-down and tripled-down in the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, which resulted in people basically refusing to work, and saying stuff like “FUCK OFF I DON’T HAVE TO COME IN TO WORK!!! YOU *HAVE* TO PAY ME MONEY FOR ME TO SIT IN MY PAJAMAS AND DO CHEDDARJACK-SHIT AND ENTER A ZOOM MEETING ONCE A DAY!!! AND I *DON’T HAVE* TO COME TO WORK, AND YOU *HAVE TO PAY ME!!!* – AND IF YOU DON’T I’LL *SUE YOUR ASS* FOR REQUIRED-TO-ACTUALLY-WORK-DISCRIMINATION!!!”

    Sorry, you gotta actually show up to get paid. This is human history, not my opinion.

  19. I used to work one job, 14 hour days, 6 days a week. 40 hour weeks seemed like such a luxury

    Now I work 6 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. I don’t know what the hell to do with my free time

    I’d say let businesses and people do whatever they want

  20. I had a job for a number of years that was 7am-6pm M-Th and that was fantastic. For a lot of places that need to be open on Fridays that’s not practical, but for us we had some people who worked Tu-F 4 day week.

  24. It’s a cultural norm… Not a legal mandate.

    The 5/40 week is around 80-90 years old as an accepted standard. So things can certainly change. That said… 80-90 years is a long fucking time and anything that has been “standard” for generations is going to be very hard to change.

  26. “The US” doesn’t set workplace behavior. That’s not up to the government, it’s up to each individual employer.

    I think 4 day workweeks are likely to become the norm eventually, as technology allows each worker to become more and more efficient, it’ll just make the most economic sense to have workers working less.

  28. I have a friend in college that has her working days reduced to 2 instead of 5. So I guess with the power of friendship and capitalism anything is possible.

  31. The 5-day work week isn’t standard now, the 40-hour work week is. Lots of people work 4×10 as their standard. If you want to talk about actually decreasing how much people work, you need to frame the conversation around decreasing the hours instead of decreasing the days.

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