It’s time to rethink the five-day workweek

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Sixty-five years ago this month, President Richard Nixon made front-page news predicting that America was moving toward a four-day workweek. We’re nowhere near Nixon’s goal — and even further from John Maynard Keynes’s 1928 prediction that we’d all be working 15-hour weeks by 2028. But with record numbers of people quitting their jobs during the pandemic in what’s being called the Great Resignation, it’s time for more employers to consider offering their workers a four-day workweek.

Millions of people accustomed to working five days a week in an office got a taste of work-from-home freedom during the pandemic and don’t want to go back to the rat race routine. Forty-one percent of U.S. workers are considering leaving their jobs within the next six months, according to a recent survey from Credit Karma, and a record 10.1 million jobs remain unfilled.

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