There is nothing sacred about a five-day work week.

For most of the 19th century, the typical American worker was a male farmer who worked 60 to 70 hours per week.

Factory work then led to a push for a 10-hour day starting in the late 1820s, six days a week.

In the U.S., one of the earliest instances of a business implementing a five-day week was a mill in New England that in 1908 gave its Jewish workers a two-day weekend, to cover their Saturday sabbath.

In 1926, the Ford Motor Company adopted the five-day week.

There was plenty of pushback and naysayers….

“Any man demanding the forty hour week should be ashamed to claim citizenship in this great country,” the chairman of the board of the Philadelphia Gear Works wrote shortly after Ford rolled out its new hours.

“The men of our country are becoming a race of softies and mollycoddles.”

The National Association of Manufacturers wrote, “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance.”

You can hear the echos are these complaints today, when you talk about a 4 day week.

But unlike today, these critiques were limited to a few top hat wearing elites — the notion that we could spend less and less time working didn’t elicit the same sense of impossibility that it does today — it was in keeping with the common belief that expanding leisure time was a mark of moral progress.

In the mid-1960s, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine wrote: it was “unlikely that the four-day week will be postponed indefinitely.”

The idea that we should use technology and productivity gains to liberate us, was taken for granted.

It’s clearly possible for people to work less as the economy continues to grow and automate. Thats been the historical trend.

To me, the 4 day work week is inevitable.

And there are plenty of stats and studies showing how a 4 day work week can benefit business. Talent acquisition, retention, productivity…

But the real case for the four-day workweek is not that it would benefit businesses.

It’s that it benefits people.

If you’re an employer, your people. The people in your orbit will be happier and healthier and better positioned to deal with modern life.

It’s good for you, them and ultimately, society at large.