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Iceland did not approve a universal four-day workweek in 2019. Instead, public-sector trials tested shorter working hours, generally with no reduction in pay, and later collective agreements extended shorter-hour options to parts of the workforce. Results in participating workplaces were encouraging, but the trials did not establish that every worker moved to four days or that the model will work the same way in every job.
What Iceland tested—and when
Iceland’s shorter-hours trials were experiments in reducing weekly hours, not a single nationwide switch to a four-day schedule. Reykjavik City ran a trial from 2015 to 2019; a broader national-government trial ran from 2017 to 2021. The 2015–2019 trial reduced working weeks to about 35–36 hours without cutting pay. Across the trials, cuts varied by workplace, with arrangements generally reducing hours by one to four per week. Alda and Autonomy’s 2021 summary and the Library of Congress account describe the pilots and their varied implementation.
In total, 2,500 workers took part—more than 1% of Iceland’s workforce, according to the 2021 Alda and Autonomy summary. The Library of Congress reported that the trials covered more than 60 workplaces and government agencies. Those figures describe substantial public-sector experiments, not the entire Icelandic economy.
What the trials found
The joint 2021 summary reported that productivity and service provision stayed the same or improved in most participating workplaces. It also reported improvements in employee wellbeing, including stress, burnout, health, and work-life balance. These are positive reported outcomes at trial sites, not a guarantee that shorter hours will preserve service or output in every workplace. The report summary and BSRB’s account of shorter working hours provide the published descriptions of the results.
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The trials let workplaces adapt schedules and working practices rather than impose the same arrangement everywhere. That flexibility matters: reducing hours can require changes to staffing, task allocation, opening times, or handovers if services are to continue reliably.
How shorter hours spread after the trials
The broader change came through collective bargaining, not a 2019 law establishing a four-day week for everyone. BSRB says 2020 collective agreements negotiated shorter hours without reducing wages. For many public-sector daytime employees, the reduction from 40 to 36 hours took effect on 1 January 2021. Some shift workers in specified demanding patterns could move to 32 hours. The details depended on the applicable agreement and work arrangement; these figures should not be read as a universal schedule for all Icelandic workers. BSRB explains the negotiated changes.
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The Library of Congress noted in January 2022 that Iceland’s statutory framework still set a 40-hour maximum at that time, while working terms were also shaped by collective agreements and individual contracts. That account does not describe a universal four-day-week statute. Separately, Alda’s 2021 summary said 86% of the country’s workforce either worked shorter hours or had the right to shorten them. That was the report’s description of the post-trial landscape in 2021, not a verified measure of current coverage.
What the latest national hours figure does—and does not—show
Statistics Iceland reported that people at work averaged 35.9 actual hours per week in 2025, down from 36.3 in 2024. Usual hours averaged 37.7 in 2025. These are labor-force survey averages, not counts of people working four days a week, and they do not show that the trials caused a nationwide productivity or wellbeing change. Statistics Iceland also notes that it revised its questions about actual hours in 2021, so comparisons should be interpreted in light of that measurement change. Statistics Iceland’s 2025 labour-market release gives the figures and methodology note.
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Trade-offs and limits of the Iceland example
Shorter hours were not frictionless. The Library of Congress account notes that some managers found it difficult to reduce their own hours, some shift workers reported handover challenges, and some public-health settings recruited additional workers. These examples point to practical questions employers need to address alongside pay and scheduling.
- Work and coverage: Decide how responsibilities, customer access, and shift handovers will work with fewer hours.
- Staffing and costs: Check whether maintaining service requires additional hires, overtime, or a redesign of duties.
- Results: Track service quality and productivity as well as employee wellbeing; improvement in one measure does not prove improvement in all.
- Terms: Establish whether hours are reduced each day, consolidated into fewer days, or arranged another way, and specify whether pay is protected.
The evidence here concerns trials and negotiated arrangements, particularly in public-sector workplaces. It does not show that every Icelandic worker adopted a four-day week or that one policy explains all subsequent changes in working hours. The available national average is descriptive, while trial outcomes reflect participating sites. Together, the evidence supports a more limited conclusion: Iceland tested shorter hours, reported broadly positive results in many trial workplaces, and later negotiated reductions for covered groups.
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