Survey Finds That $21.6 Billion Worth of Time is Spent Deleting Spam
March 4, 2005
The 2004 National Technology Readiness Survey, conducted by the University of Maryland and Rockbridge Associates, measured the impact of SPAM (unsolicited e-mail messages) on annual worker productivity. The survey results were based on a random sample of 1000 adults in the United States. Twenty seven percent of the respondents indicated that they delete spam every day. The amount of time spent deleting SPAM in a typical day ranged between 0 and more than 5 minutes. The survey aggregated the results across the 169 million online adults nationwide to conclude that SPAM is responsible for over 22.9 million wasted hours a week, translating into 573,000 jobs and $21.6 billion per year in lost productivity.
