ON AUGUST 15th Yemenis woke up and, although it was a Thursday, for the first time since a two-day weekend was introduced in the late 1990s, everyone had to go to work.



Yemen is the last country in the world to switch to a Friday-Saturday weekend and abandon Thursday as a day of rest; Afghans and Iranians still take half the day off. The shift is meant to better align the Yemeni workweek with that of its trading partners in the Middle East, Asia and the West. “They were wasting a Thursday,” says Nabil al-Khamery, a prominent car-dealer whose business relies on international trade. “To save time and money, you have to [correspond] with the system.”



The original governmental decree was issued in January 2012 but lingered, unimplemented. Some disliked the idea of sharing Saturday with the Jewish sabbath; others were simply loth to break from tradition. But Saudi Arabia’s adoption of the Friday-Saturday weekend in June finally pushed Yemen to follow suit, says Saad Al-Deen bin Talib, the minister of trade and industry. It set a precedent of religious acceptability that has largely quieted the critics. Overall, Mr Talib sees the change as “a step forward to the rest of the world,” but says it is too soon to gauge the economic benefit.

The move will, however, make little difference to the many Yemenis who already work six days a week. “I sit here twenty four hours a day,” says Mohammed al-Rukan, a shopkeeper in the capital Sana’a. The poor, he adds, rarely take time off.



