Study Finds Fair Workweek Laws Improve Schedule Predictability

For years, employers have argued that predictable scheduling mandates could increase labor costs and force difficult tradeoffs, including lower wages, reduced benefits, or changes to hiring practices. But new research suggests those concerns may be overstated.

A comprehensive new study published in Science Advances found that Fair Workweek laws significantly improve schedule stability for hourly retail and food service workers while showing little evidence that employers offset compliance costs by cutting compensation or benefits.

The study analyzed more than 87,000 hourly workers across 217 large retail and food service employers between 2017 and 2023, making it the largest evaluation to date of Fair Workweek laws enacted in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Oregon, and Seattle.

For HR leaders, the findings offer new evidence that predictable scheduling policies can improve job quality without producing many of the unintended consequences critics have anticipated.

“Fair Workweek laws, implemented in several large cities and one state, represent a new wave of innovation in a century of contestation and legislation around work time,” said Daniel Schneider, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, co-author of the research, and co-director of The Shift Project based in Cambridge, Mass.

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Fair Workweek laws are scheduling regulations which address unpredictable work schedules, insufficient work hours, and frequent last-minute changes that create financial and personal instability for hourly employees. 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.

The researchers found that Fair Workweek laws increased the share of workers receiving at least two weeks’ advance notice of their schedules by 13 percentage points — roughly a 29% improvement over baseline. The laws also reduced back-to-back closing and opening shifts by 8 percentage points and lowered last-minute schedule changes by 6 percentage points.

As Schneider explained, “We find robust evidence that Fair Workweek regulations led to increases in advance notice of schedules and time to rest between shifts and reductions in last-minute schedule changes.”

Importantly for employers concerned about compliance costs, the researchers found no evidence that organizations broadly compensated by reducing wages, paid leave, health insurance, dental coverage, or vacation benefits.

“We find no evidence of compensatory retrenchment in other aspects of job quality,” Schneider said.

The study also found no meaningful evidence that employers substantially altered workforce composition to offset the requirements of the laws.

That finding may help ease concerns among HR leaders who have questioned whether predictable scheduling mandates inevitably create new financial burdens requiring tradeoffs elsewhere in the employment relationship.

The research comes amid broader changes in the nature of hourly work. Schneider noted that while federal labor standards historically focused on limiting excessive work hours, some of today’s service-sector employees often face the opposite problem.

“Where workers once sought freedom from overwork, cashiers and cooks scrounge for sufficient hours to get by,” he said.

Still, the study found that results varied considerably across jurisdictions.

New York City experienced the largest improvements, including a 25-percentage-point increase in workers receiving two weeks’ advance notice of their schedules. Philadelphia, by comparison, saw only a 5-percentage-point improvement.

The researchers attribute much of that difference to enforcement. “These average effects … point to the importance of local enforcement in realizing policy goals,” Schneider said.

Effective implementation depends heavily on local agencies’ ability to educate employers, investigate complaints, analyze scheduling records, and impose meaningful penalties when violations occur.

According to the researchers, New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection stands out because of its aggressive enforcement efforts, including several high-profile settlements involving Fair Workweek violations.

By contrast, many jurisdictions rely primarily on complaint-driven enforcement, requiring workers to understand their rights and feel comfortable reporting violations, conditions that may limit the laws’ practical impact.

The study also identified areas where Fair Workweek laws have yet to achieve their intended goals. Researchers found little evidence that the laws reduced on-call scheduling, decreased shift cancellations, or expanded access to additional work hours for involuntary part-time employees.