Utah State Workers Get 4-Day Week

Utah will roll out a mandatory four-day work week for most state employees in August, USA Today reports, the first state to do so. Republican Gove. Jon Huntsman says he's making the change to reduce his state's negative impact on the environment and to provide workers with more flexibility; offices will be open longer on other days to compensate.

"The reaction has been very much a willingness to give this a go," Huntsman says; four-day weeks are already common among city and county governments across the US. "Alternative work schedules offer more of this work-life balance than do traditional work schedules," says a professor at Brigham Young. (More Utah stories.)