Research

My research follows a few questions about work: where it happens, how long it lasts, what people want from it, and what it gives back or takes away—day to day and over a lifetime.

Current projects

Remote & hybrid work

What changes when work leaves the office—and for whom?

Data
Remote Work Dynamics Panel Study, October 2020–April 2022 (with Phyllis Moen)
Funding
National Science Foundation (2032639, 2049125)

The pandemic sent millions of workers home almost overnight. Then employers began calling them back. We followed the same workers for 18 months, through both moves, to see what changed—where they worked and wanted to work, their hours, their job conditions, their family lives, and their well-being—and how those changes differed by gender, race, education, and caregiving.

Where

As work moved home and then back again, many people found themselves working in a place they had not chosen. A mismatch like this is common and often temporary: people change jobs, change where they work, or change their minds. The trouble starts when they cannot do any of those things. Workers with the least bargaining power were the most likely to get stuck, and being stuck, more than the mismatch itself, is what took a toll on how they felt about their work and their lives.

Social Forces 2025 · Social Psychology Quarterly 2026 · Society and Mental Health forthcoming

The mismatch didn't go away—it flipped

Share of workers whose work location (on-site or remote/hybrid) did not match the one they wanted, by survey wave

On-site, would rather be remote Remote, would rather be on-site
0%10%20%Oct 2020Apr 2021Oct 2021Apr 202210%15%18%5%

Source: Fan and Moen (2025), Social Forces, Figure 2.

Hours

Working from home is often pictured as a way to gain control over one's time. When we surveyed remote workers in October 2020, about half said their hours were about the same as before the pandemic. Averages, though, hide what happened to women: their hours were more likely to swing, sharply down for some and sharply up for others. Which way they went depended on care. Women with the heaviest care loads, such as those looking after both children and aging parents, put their jobs on the back burner. Women with lighter care duties often worked longer, possibly to make up for interruptions at home or to show they were still committed.

Work and Occupations 2022

Women's hours swung more

Share of remote workers whose hours changed “by a significant amount,” October 2020

Hours fell sharplyWomen10%Men6%Hours rose sharplyWomen8%Men5%

Source: Fan and Moen (2022), Work and Occupations, Table 1.

The job

Offices have long run on face time and on an image of the ideal worker who is always present. Compared with going back, staying remote or hybrid eased job pressure and gave many workers more say over their work. Returning meant returning to the old rules, and the costs were not shared equally: Black and Hispanic women lost the most control over their schedules. The office did bring more support from coworkers, but mainly for white workers; Black men who returned got less.

Work and Occupations 2025

Going back cost Black and Hispanic women the most control

Change in schedule control (1–5 scale) after returning to the office, compared with staying remote or hybrid

WomenWhite−0.12Black−0.39Hispanic−0.35Other races−0.32MenWhite−0.06Black−0.14Hispanic+0.11Other races−0.04

Faded bars: not statistically significant.
Source: Fan and Moen (2025), Work and Occupations, Figure 1.

Home

Working from home has long been seen as a way to fit work and family together. The pandemic tested that idea under hard conditions. When schools stayed open, working from home eased mothers' stress; when schools were ordered to close, it added to it. Parents who worked remotely in jobs that were rarely done from home before COVID-19 had the hardest time. How people drew the line between work and home mattered too: those who set up physical boundaries fared best, while caregivers were the most likely to say they could not keep the two apart.

Social Sciences 2024 · ILR Review 2026 · Community, Work & Family forthcoming

Remote work helped mothers—until schools closed

Mothers' predicted work–life tensions, by where they worked and whether their state required schools to close

Schools openRemote/hybrid0.27At the workplace0.51Schools required to closeRemote/hybrid0.42At the workplace0.08

Source: Fan and Moen (2024), Social Sciences, Figure 1.

Well-being

Remote work was often called a silver lining of the pandemic. Our findings partly bear that out: a full return to the office was generally more stressful than staying remote. Hybrid work, the middle ground, worked out differently for different people. It was especially good for minority men and men without a college degree, but worse for white women.

Journal of Health and Social Behavior 2023

Returning to the office lowered the odds of doing well

Change in the chance (percentage points) of being in the best well-being group—low stress, high satisfaction—compared with staying remote

Back to the officeWomen−4.9Men−9.4Moving to hybridWomen−4.4Men−4.5

Faded bars: not statistically significant.
Source: Fan and Moen (2023), Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Table 2.

Read the papers

Writing for the public

In the news

NPR Marketplace · Bloomberg

Four-day workweeks

What happens when the workweek gets shorter but the paycheck doesn't?

Data
Four-day workweek trials, 2022–ongoing: more than 10,000 employees in more than 270 organizations in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa (with Juliet Schor, Phyllis Moen, and Orla Kelly)
Funding
National Science Foundation (2241840); Russell Sage Foundation (2205-38631)

Since 2022, hundreds of organizations have moved to a four-day, 32-hour week for six months while keeping pay the same. We survey their employees before, during, and after each trial, and we keep in touch with the organizations afterward. We ask what shorter hours change for workers—their health, how they spend their time, where they draw the line between work and the rest of life, and what they believe their workplaces expect of them—and what it takes for organizations to make the change last.

Well-being

Long hours are tied to burnout and poor health, yet workplace responses to overwork have often asked individual workers to cope better on their own. The four-day week changes the schedule for everyone at once. Workers in the trials reported less burnout and better job satisfaction, mental health, and physical health; workers in comparison companies that kept their usual schedule saw no such change. The bigger the cut in hours, the bigger the gains, and the gains held a year later. Why did fewer hours help? Three changes did most of the work: workers felt better able to do their jobs, slept better, and were less tired.

Nature Human Behaviour 2025

Trial workers did better; comparison workers didn't change

Change from before the trial to the end of the six-month trial (burnout and health on 1–5 scales; job satisfaction 0–10)

Trial companies Comparison companies
Burnout (lower is better)Trial−0.44Comparison+0.04Job satisfactionTrial+0.52Comparison−0.19Mental healthTrial+0.39Comparison+0.03Physical healthTrial+0.28Comparison+0.04

Faded bars: not statistically significant. Trial: 2,896 employees in 141 companies; comparison: 285 employees in 12 companies.
Source: Fan, Schor, Kelly, and Gu (2025), Nature Human Behaviour, Table 2.

Keeping it

A trial is easy to start. The harder question is whether employers keep the new schedule after the trial ends, and most did. The companies that went back to five days tell us what makes the change last. Companies where work stress rose rather than fell were more likely to stop. So were companies whose workers reported working more efficiently by the end of the trial, which suggests that some employers may have kept the efficiency gains and taken back the time. Companies with more white men on staff were also more likely to go back. Industry, country, company size, and remote work made little difference, so the four-day week can work across many kinds of organizations.

ILR Review forthcoming

Nine in ten companies kept the four-day week

197 companies that began trials between February 2022 and June 2023, followed for 12 to 28 months

Kept it: 177 (90%)Went back: 20When the 20 went backDuring the trial10At the end5In the next 6 months5

Source: Schor, Fan, Gu, and Fitzgerald (forthcoming), ILR Review.

Read the papers

Working papers

  • Navigating Life Under a Four-Day Workweek: A Multimethod, Gendered Life Course Examination of Time-Work Boundary Strategies and Work-Life FitYoungmin Chu, Phyllis Moen, Wen Fan, and Juliet Schor · revise and resubmit
  • A “New” Category of Time? How Temporal Perceptions Shift for Workers in Four-day Week TrialsAmi Campbell, Wen Fan, Juliet Schor, and Phyllis Moen · revise and resubmit
  • Un-stalling the Gender Revolution? Worktime Reduction and Time Use at the Intersection of Gender and ParenthoodOrla Kelly, Juliet Schor, Wen Fan, Niamh Bridson-Hubbard, and Tatiana Bezdenezhnykh · under review

Book by Juliet B. Schor

Writing for the public

In the news

Nature · Scientific American · New Scientist · BBC Science Focus · Business Insider · El País · NPR · Fast Company

The meaning of work

What does work mean to young people in China today—and what has shaped those meanings?

Data
In-depth interviews with young workers in China, 2024; online discussions
Funding
Boston College Research Incentive Grant
Status
In progress

Young people in China are entering work at a time of rapid economic and social change. Talk of “involution” (内卷)—ever harder competition for the same rewards—and of “lying flat” (躺平)—stepping out of that race—has put their relationship to work at the center of public debate. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young workers and on online discussions, I ask what work means to them and how their families, schooling, workplaces, and the times they grew up in have shaped those meanings.

The times they grew up in

19902000201020202024
Since 1980

Under the one-child policy, many of this generation grow up as only children.

Where

I talked with young workers in person in cities large and small, from Beijing and Shanghai to Yueyang and Hunchun. Each conversation followed a person’s life from childhood and school through every job they had held.

BeijingBeijingChangchunChangchunChengduChengduHangzhouHangzhouHunchunHunchunNanjingNanjingShanghaiShanghaiSuzhouSuzhouWuhanWuhanXiamenXiamenXi’anXi’anYueyangYueyang
Cities in mainland China where interviews took place.

How

Each interview was a long conversation that followed a person’s life—family, school, and work—and how they felt along the way. Many of these conversations moved between laughter and tears, and I am grateful to everyone who shared their story with me. Alongside the interviews, I draw on more than a decade of public online discussion about work.

56interviews
12cities
116hours of conversation
~2hours each, up to 3
10+years of online discussion

Three paper tools helped each conversation along.

A work history. Built together job by job: what the work involved, how it felt, and how one job led to the next.
A life line. Drawn by each person, with the highs and lows they chose to mark.
A card sort. From a list of things a job can offer, each person picked what mattered most to them—once for their first job, and once for now.

Related research on work in China