The ideal work-week length has been found – and its not what you’ve been told

What’s the optimal workweek?

A new bill in Congress is looking to move the U.S. from the standard 40 hours a week to just 32 hours. The 32-Hour Workweek Act, introduced by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Rep. Mark Takano, would allow employees to receive overtime pay for any hours worked beyond eight hours a day.

The change would happen gradually over the course of four years – but is 32 hours ideal?

Duke University economists have found the “optimal” workweek is closer to 37 hours, to improve employee wellbeing. Though there would be increased wellbeing seen at 32 hours, as well.

“The size of the welfare gains depends in particular on whether the policy has bite for those workers that currently report working very high hours,” the researchers wrote in 2025.

Their findings relied on a survey data collected from workers in Germany who, like Americans, usually exceed a 40-hour work week.

However, U.S. workers put in a quarter more hours than European employees do, Arizona State University research from 2016 shows.

The average full-time U.S. worker worked about 43 hours a week in 2024, a 2025 Gallup report showed.

The 40-hour workweek became the U.S. standard in 1940, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was changed.

Unfortunately, any workweek of 40 hours or more comes with impacts to peoples’ health, experts say. Working long hours has been traced to an increased risk for life-threatening stroke and cardiovascular disease.

People who work an average of one 10-hour day a week see their risk of suffering a stroke rise by a third compared with someone who does not regularly work “long hours,” a government study in France found in 2019.

The additional stroke risk was most pronounced in younger workers under the age of 50.

It’s not just health that takes a hit, either. Productivity declines are seen after 50 hours, too, according to a Stanford University study from 2013 shows.

“A car doesn’t perform optimally when its gas tank is on empty,” Cleveland Clinic psychologist Dr. Adam Borland explained last year.