Tired workers cost America hundreds of billions annually, survey says
If you're showing up to work yearning to go back to bed, you're not alone. Nearly three quarters of America's workers arrive at work tired, a study by staffing firm Accountemps found, estimating that employee exhaustion costs the economy $411 billion annually.
Some of the massive mistakes that pooped professionals confessed to making while on the job included accidentally paying everyone twice and deleting a project that took 1,000 hours to assemble, according to the survey.
"The continued workload that workers have, the stress associated with it, has a lot to do with lack of sleep because they tend to take work home," Accountemps executive Richard Deosingh told CBS News.
Apart from the business impact, it's simply bad for an individual's health to not get enough sleep. A good night's rest is how the body recovers and returns to a productive state. About a third of Americans suffer from sleep deprivation on a daily basis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chronic sleep loss can affect a person's health in many ways, including making you more susceptible to weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and depression, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
While sleep needs vary from person to person, the foundation says adults need at least seven hours of sleep per day for optimal health. Elementary school children need at least nine hours; teenagers require at least eight hours.
The Accountemps survey included responses from more than 2,800 adult workers from offices in 28 cities in the U.S. The most sleepless city from the report wasn't Seattle, or even New York, as one might expect. Here are the top five cities where the greatest share of employees reported going to work tired:
Nashville, Tennessee
Austin, Texas
Denver
Indianapolis
Des Moines, Iowa
