New study finds Fair Workweek laws improve work schedules without cutting pay or benefits

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A new study examining Fair Workweek laws across five major U.S. jurisdictions finds that labor regulations have made work schedules more predictable for service sector workers, without triggering wage cuts or benefit reductions. Published in Science Advances, the research Fair Workweek Laws in the U.S.: An Appraisal of Intended and Unintended Consequences, is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of Fair Workweek (FWW) laws, enacted in places like Seattle, Oregon, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. These laws require large retail and food service employers to provide at least two weeks’ advance notice of schedules, compensate workers for last-minute changes, and ban back-to-back closing and opening shifts. 

Hourly workers in the service sector—such as cashiers, cooks, and retail associates—have long dealt with low wages and highly unpredictable schedules, including last-minute cancellations and timing changes and fluctuating hours, all with limited advance notice. Studies have linked this instability to negative effects on health, family life, and financial security. Starting in 2014, several cities and the state of Oregon enacted Fair Workweek laws to address these issues, but until now there has been limited comprehensive evidence on their effectiveness and whether they create unintended costs for workers. 

Key Findings 

Drawing on original survey data from more than 87,000 hourly workers collected over seven years, the researchers found improvements across several dimensions of schedule quality. Fair Workweek laws increased the share of workers receiving at least two weeks' notice of their schedules by 13 percentage points, roughly a 29% improvement over baseline. The laws also reduced exposure to back-to-back closing and opening shifts by 8 percentage points (roughly 19%) and cut last-minute timing changes by 6 percentage points. 

Critically, employers did not respond to these new obligations by cutting wages or benefits. Workers covered by Fair Workweek laws saw no reductions in sick leave, health insurance, dental coverage, or paid vacation, and health insurance coverage saw modest increases. The researchers also found no evidence that employers shifted workforce composition in ways that might offset compliance costs. 

The study's jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction analysis reveals important variation in the impact of the FWWs across the locations. New York City, which has pursued the most high-profile enforcement actions and largest financial settlements for Fair Workweek violations, saw by far the greatest gains. For instance, NYC saw a 25-percentage-point increase in advance notice, compared to just 5 points in Philadelphia. The authors attribute this gap to differences in local enforcement capacity, pointing to NYC's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection as a model of organizational commitment to the law. 

The findings suggest that Fair Workweek laws can serve as an effective model for improving job quality and economic stability for millions of hourly workers nationwide. As more cities and states consider adopting similar standards, the study indicates that broader implementation, paired with strong enforcement, could expand these benefits for hourly workers in the service sector. 

“Fair Workweek laws are doing what they promised: giving service-sector workers more predictable schedules and more rest between shifts, without cutting their pay or benefits,” said Daniel Schneider, the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the Shift Project. “Our findings show that when these laws are paired with strong local enforcement, they can be a powerful model for improving job quality and financial stability for millions of workers across the country.” 

About the Research 

The study, led by Daniel Schneider and David Arbelaez of Harvard Kennedy School and Kristen Harknett of UC Berkeley, draws on the Shift Project, an original survey dataset built specifically to evaluate Fair Workweek laws. The researchers surveyed more than 87,000 hourly workers at 217 large retail and food service firms across 14 survey waves from 2017 to 2023. 

More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science Advances press package at www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak/. 

About the Shift Project 

The Shift Project is a research initiative based at Harvard Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2016, the project has surveyed more than 200,000 hourly service-sector workers to examine the causes and consequences of precarious working conditions — from scheduling instability to workplace surveillance to the effects of labor standards legislation. The project's findings have informed policy debates at the local, state, and federal level and have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals. More information is available at shift.hks.harvard.edu. 

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