52:23 minutes | July 2, 2025
#26 The Four-Day Workweek
Revolution or Risk? with Juliet B. Schor
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About Speaker
Juliet Schor is an economist and Professor of Sociology at Boston College. In 2022 she became the lead
researcher for pathbreaking trials studying hundreds of companies instituting four day, thirty-two hour
workweeks with five days’ pay. The research, which is ongoing, finds large improvements in well-being
outcomes and success for the participating organizations. Her book, Four Days a Week (HarperBusiness,
2025), details these findings.
Schor has been researching worktime since the 1980s and is the author of The Overworked American: the
unexpected decline of leisure (Basic Books, 1992), which was a national bestseller. Schor has also
researched sustainable consumption and the link between climate change and worktime, and, since 2011,
the platform economy. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Schor received her Ph.D. in economics at the
University of Massachusetts. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17
years in the Department of Economics and later, the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. Schor’s
other books include After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back
(California, 2020), Plenitude: the new economics of true wealth (Penguin Press 2010), Born to Buy: The
Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004), and The Overspent American:
Why We Want What We Don’t Need (Basic Books, 1998).
Schor is the recipient of numerous awards, and is an Elected Fellow of the AAAS and, most recently, the
2024 Honorary Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Her work has been
supported by the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the
Russell Sage Foundation, among others. A frequent contributor to public discourse and media, Schor’s
Ted talk on “the case for the four day week” has more than three million views.
Additional inspirations from Juliet Schor
- Link to Professor Schor’s latest book Four Days a Week. The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being, and Working Smarter./a>
