Icelandic researchers who studied two large government trials for a 35-36 hour work week declared that the experiment has been an 'overwhelming success,' said CNN.

The trials involved public sector employees at both the municipal and national level from 2015 to 2019, all of whom went from a 40 hour work week to a 35-36 hour one, with no reduction in pay. The 2,500 person study, which accounts for 1 percent of the small country's entire working population, found dramatic improvements in worker well being from perceived stress and burnout, to health and work-life balance. At the same time, productivity and services stayed the same or improved across the majority of workplaces where the experiment was being tried.

Following the trials, most of the country is now on a shorter work week, a major union in the country having negotiated the new hours for roughly 86 percent of the working population. One possible confounding factor was that both studies looked only at public sector workers, and so the dynamics in private sector companies have yet to be seen, though given the recent union negotiation, it seems this unofficial third experiement has now launched.