A growing number of manufacturers are moving production to four-day compressed schedules, a shift driven less by ideology than by arithmetic: skilled workers are scarce, and retention now outweighs the cost of reorganizing shifts.
Surveys published this summer count more than 400 mid-sized plants across Germany, Japan and the US Midwest running four-day patterns, triple the number two years ago. Most report flat or slightly improved output per hour, with absenteeism down by a quarter.
Economists remain divided on how far the model scales — continuous-process industries cannot compress — but recruiters say the schedule has become the single most-asked-about benefit in factory hiring.