The argument against the shorter working week has always rested on a single assumption: that output is proportional to hours. Uruguay spent eighteen months stress-testing that assumption across 900 participating companies, 140,000 workers, and eleven distinct economic sectors. The assumption did not survive.
Overall productivity — measured as output per worker per week — rose by 7.3 percent across the pilot cohort compared to matched controls working standard five-day schedules. The gains were largest in knowledge-intensive sectors: software, financial services, and professional consulting all posted double-digit productivity increases.
Absenteeism fell sharply. Sick-day usage dropped by 23 percent, and voluntary turnover — the costly churn of employees leaving for competitors — declined by 31 percent. Participating companies reported average annual savings of $3,400 per employee in recruitment and training costs alone.
Critics had forecast a consumer spending contraction as leisure hours expanded. Retail and hospitality data show the opposite: Friday, newly freed for millions of workers, became the highest-spending day of the week, with restaurant covers and cultural venue attendance surging.
"We were measuring the wrong thing for a hundred years," said Dr. Valentina Pereyra, the trial's lead economist. "Hours are an input. What matters is what people produce — and people produce more when they are not exhausted."