Iceland's National Shorter Working Week Trials — From Pilot to a 36-Hour Norm

Between 2015 and 2019, Iceland's national government and the Reykjavík City Council ran a set of workplace trials testing a shorter working week without a pay cut. Roughly 2,500 public-sector workers — more than 1% of Iceland's entire workforce — moved from a standard 40-hour week to 35–36 hours, across settings ranging from municipal offices to hospitals and social-service providers.

To test whether reducing working hours at full pay could maintain productivity and service provision while improving worker wellbeing.

The trials were independently evaluated by Alda, the Reykjavík-based Association for Sustainable Democracy, together with the UK think tank Autonomy, comparing productivity and service provision across participating workplaces and later running a 2021–22 follow-up survey of workers.

The evaluation found that productivity and service provision stayed the same or improved across most participating workplaces, while workers reported meaningfully better work-life balance, lower stress and fewer sick days. The 2021–22 follow-up survey found 62% of workers reporting greater schedule satisfaction, 97% saying it was as easy or easier to balance work and private life, and 42% reporting reduced private-life stress against just 6% reporting more. Building on the trial results, Icelandic trade unions renegotiated national contracts, and by 2021 an estimated 86% of Iceland's workforce had either moved to permanently shorter hours or gained the contractual right to request them, with the general standard settling at 36 hours.

The trials are public-sector in origin, so how directly the results transfer to private employers competing on cost is not fully settled by this evidence. Iceland's subsequent economic performance (5% GDP growth in 2023) is offered by commentators as supportive context rather than proof that shorter hours caused it. What is well documented is the scale, duration and structural follow-through — a rare case of a working-time pilot converting into a near-universal, permanent labour-market norm.