In Iceland, the shorter working week has become the norm
A follow-up report published in October 2024 confirms it: 86% of Iceland's active population now works fewer hours, or has the right to do so. This is no longer a pilot — it is a public policy that has become firmly established.
In October 2024, the Association for Sustainability and Democracy (ALDA) published a follow-up report on what is happening in Iceland, several years after the major reduced working week trials of 2015–2019.
The finding is clear: the shorter working week did not evaporate when the pilots ended. It took hold. Today, 86% of Iceland’s active population works fewer hours than before — or has the right to do so. Among those who have made the transition, 78% say they are satisfied with their current working hours.
Perhaps most striking: 97% of Icelandic workers say the reduction in hours has improved their work-life balance, or changed nothing. And 42% report that their stress outside work has decreased.
Sceptics will note that Iceland is a country of 370,000 inhabitants with marked cultural specificities. Fair enough. But it is also the first country to have trialled the shorter working week at scale in the public sector, with rigorous academic monitoring — and to have measured its effects over several years, not just during the enthusiasm of the launch.
The result is not a utopia. It is a documented public policy, and a replicable one.
Further reading: The four-day week: what the data actually proves