Average Worker Goofs Off 2.09 Hours Per Day!

July 13th, 2005 · No Comments

Woman sleeping at work

C|NET News writes that the longer days everyone’s supposed to work these past few years are having negative effects for productivity:

Traipsing around the Internet is the most popular form of loafing on the job. The insurance industry is particularly rife with goofing off, and Missouri is the top state for time-wasters.

Those are among the conclusions of a study on wasted time at work released Monday by compensation specialist Salary.com and Web portal America Online. Through a Web survey involving more than 10,000 employees, the report found that personal Internet surfing ranked as the top method of cooling one’s heels at work. It was cited by 44.7 percent of respondents as their primary time-wasting activity, followed by socializing with co-workers (23.4 percent) and conducting personal business (6.8 percent).

The average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per day, not counting lunch, according to the report. That’s far more time than the roughly one hour per day employers expect the average employee to waste, the report said. The extra unproductive time adds up to $759 billion annually in salaries for which companies get no apparent benefit, the report said.