With the dramatic increase in gasoline prices in the U.S., an increasing number of workplaces around the country are looking into ways to reduce the number of commute trips their employees have to make. One of the most popular solutions is the compressed work week consisting of four 10-hour days.

Potential Energy Savings

For the roughly 103 million people who are on a traditional 8-hour work schedule, changing to four 10-hour workdays will eliminate one commuting trip each week. With the average U.S. round-trip commute of 30.6 miles and the average fuel consumption rate of 20.2 miles per gallon, this could theoretically save 7.8 billion gallons of fuel a year if everyone adopted 4x10 schedules [see Table 1]. We say "theoretically" because eliminating a commute trip doesn't mean people won't drive somewhere on their day off. However, as the price of gasoline continues to rise, people will tend to use their cars only when absolutely necessary.

Potential Air Quality Improvements

By reducing the miles driven each week, compressed workweeks also will reduce vehicle emissions. This theoretically could be equivalent to removing 12.6 million cars from the road [see Table 2].

Employee Benefits

As shown in Table 1, individual employees would save an average of $312 per year in fuel costs by working a 4x10 schedule. With a mean U.S. commute time of 25 minutes, employees also would save almost 42 hours a year in time spent commuting to and from work [see Table 3].

Many employees believe that they can achieve a better balance between time at work and time away from work by adopting a compressed work schedule. This is often referred to as "work-life balance." In our surveys of over 20,000 shiftworkers, we found that 75% prefer longer hours of work in order to get more time off each week.

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