Most companies still go with 4-day Thanskgiving weekend

November 5th, 2012

While the four-day Thanksgiving weekend remains the norm for three of four U.S. employers, more than a third of companies are requiring some workers to show up on Thanksgiving, according to the Bloomberg BNA survey of year-end holiday practices.

Bloomberg says that throughout the history of the survey, the two-day Thanksgiving holiday has proved “mostly impervious to economic condiditions.”

This year, 36 percent of establishments will require at least some of their employees to work on the national holiday, a moderate increase in reported work requirements from the previous three years.

Still, Thanksgiving work shifts were more common a decade or longer ago; nearly half of employers surveyed in 2002 required some employees to work on Thanksgiving Day.

Bloomberg BNA notes that skeleton crews and partial operations appear to be the prevailing norm among employers who do not shut down completely for the two days.

If you’ve ever worked for a company that required you to come in on either Thursday or Friday, other than say retail stores, you probably found it slow going.

As a journalist, we have occasionally had to work one or both days of the holiday, but business news is almost non-existent because so many businesses are off for the holiday.

Black Friday may not have the best deals

And of course, e-commerce never takes vacations and the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday (the day retailers supposidely sell enough to go into the black for the year) is one of the biggest online (and offline) shopping days of the year.

Just a word of warning: Black Friday may not be the best day to shop for deals, regardless of what retailer ads say.

Most companies still go with 4-day Thanskgiving weekend

Black Friday may not have the best deals

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