New York City does not require any employer to offer a four-day work week. What exists right now is a compressed-schedule pilot for some city government employees, launched in January 2024, plus several bills in Albany that would create a voluntary reduced-hours pilot for private employers. None of the state bills have passed, so if you work in the private sector, your schedule is still governed by ordinary New York labor law.
Compressed Schedule Versus Reduced Hours
“Four-day work week” describes two different arrangements, and the difference matters for your pay and your overtime.
A compressed schedule packs the same 40 hours into four longer days, usually four 10-hour shifts. Total hours don’t change, and neither does the overtime math under current law. A reduced-hours model cuts the total to about 32 hours across four standard days while keeping pay at what you earned for 40. Advocates call this the “100-80-100” framework: 100 percent pay, 80 percent of the time, 100 percent productivity.
The NYC city employee pilot uses the compressed approach. The pending state bills target the reduced-hours model.
The NYC City Employee Pilot
In January 2024, Mayor Adams and DC 37, the city’s largest public-employee union, launched a compressed workweek pilot for city employees who cannot work remotely but whose agencies can accommodate a schedule change. Participating workers either shift to a four-day week or alternate between four-day and five-day weeks, with daily hours extended so the total across a two-week period matches what they worked before. It is a scheduling rearrangement, not a raise and not a cut in hours.
The pilot was scheduled to run through May 2025, with an option to extend for another year. Because it operates under an existing collective bargaining agreement rather than new legislation, it covers only DC 37-represented employees at agencies that opt in. Private-sector workers, non-unionized city staff, and employees in roles where a compressed schedule would disrupt essential services are not part of it.
State Bills That Would Reach Private Employers
Several bills introduced in the 2025 legislative session would go further than the city’s experiment. Assembly Bill A3162 and its Senate companion S2335 propose a state-level four-day work week pilot. A5423 would create a similar pilot limited to state government employees. The most detailed proposal, Assembly Bill A5454, sets up a “New York Smart Work Week Pilot Program” aimed at private-sector employers.
The bills share a structure. The state would invite qualifying employers to participate voluntarily, offer financial incentives to offset transition costs, require reporting on productivity and employee outcomes, and use the results to decide whether to expand. No employer would be forced to switch.
All four bills remain in committee. A3162 sits in an Assembly committee, S2335 is in the Senate Codes Committee, and neither has received a floor vote. A5454 authorizes tax credits for participating private employers, capped at $15 million per fiscal year across all recipients, with per-employer awards of up to $250,000 or per-employee awards of up to $5,000. Public-sector employers would not qualify.
How Pay and Overtime Would Work
The reduced-hours proposals require participating employers to keep total weekly compensation at pre-pilot levels. An employee who earned a set salary for 40 hours would receive the same gross pay for 32. That protects workers from an effective hourly rate cut dressed up as a schedule change.
Under current New York law, overtime pay begins after 40 hours in a work week, at one and a half times the regular rate. The proposed bills would lower the overtime trigger to 32 hours for employees covered by the pilot. Any work beyond 32 hours would require time-and-a-half. The lower threshold is meant to discourage employers from labeling a schedule “four-day” while still scheduling people for 40-plus hours.
Federal law under the Fair Labor Standards Act independently requires overtime after 40 hours for non-exempt workers. When a state sets a lower threshold, the more generous rule wins. If New York’s proposals pass, covered employees would hit overtime at 32 hours under state law, well before the federal 40-hour trigger.
Benefits and Retirement Plan Eligibility
A shorter schedule raises a practical worry: does cutting from 40 to 32 hours put your health insurance or retirement plan at risk? For most full-time workers on a reduced-hours model, the answer is no.
Under ERISA, the federal law that sets minimum standards for employer-sponsored retirement plans, part-time employees may qualify if they work at least 1,000 hours per year. A 32-hour week across 50 working weeks produces 1,600 hours, comfortably above that threshold. Health plans tied to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate use a 30-hour-per-week definition of full-time, so 32 hours clears that bar too. The proposed legislation also bars participating employers from reducing benefits like health insurance or retirement contributions to offset costs. Individual plan documents can set their own rules above federal minimums, so read your Summary Plan Description before any schedule change.
If Your Workplace Is Unionized
If you belong to a union, your employer cannot simply announce a switch to a four-day week. Work schedules fall within “hours,” one of the mandatory subjects of bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act. Changing hours without giving the union notice and a chance to bargain is an unfair labor practice, even if the change seems favorable to employees.
The NYC city pilot shows how this plays out. The city negotiated terms with DC 37 before launching the program rather than imposing the new schedule. A private-sector employer covered by a collective bargaining agreement would need to do the same, working out scheduling details, workload expectations, and any other terms affected by the change with the union before making any switch.
If You Work Remotely From Another State
Labor law obligations generally follow the employee’s physical work location, not the employer’s headquarters. A worker sitting in New Jersey or Connecticut is subject to that state’s wage and hour rules, not New York’s. If a New York pilot lowers the overtime threshold to 32 hours, that change would likely apply only to employees physically performing work in New York. Remote workers in other states would stay under their home state’s standard 40-hour threshold unless that state enacted its own version.
Where Things Stand
No law currently requires any New York employer to offer a four-day work week. The DC 37 compressed-schedule pilot is the most concrete step taken so far, and it reshuffles days rather than cutting hours. The state bills, A3162, S2335, A5423, and A5454, remain in committee with no scheduled floor votes. Private-sector employers in the city are free to adopt a shorter schedule voluntarily, and some already have, but they do so under existing labor law rather than any new framework. If any pending bill passes, the earliest a formal pilot with tax credits and a revised overtime threshold could launch is late 2026.