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Subscribe to RSSA recent study from the Centers for Disease control found about a third of working adults get only six or fewer hours of sleep every day, which increases the risk of health problems. NBC's Robert Bazell reports.
Nearly a third of workers in the U.S. aren't getting enough sleep, according to a new government report.
Overall, 30 percent of employed U.S. adults reported getting less than six hours of sleep a night, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its report. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that healthy adults get seven to nine hours of sleep.
People who usually work the night shift — especially those in transportation, warehousing, health care and social assistance industries — were more likely than day-shift workers to report not getting enough sleep. Forty-four percent of the night shift workers participating in the survey said they got less than six hours of sleep, compared with 29 percent of workers with day shifts.
"Insufficient sleep can have serious and sometimes fatal consequences for fatigued workers and others around them," the CDC wrote. An estimated 20 percent of vehicle crashes are linked to drowsy driving.
Besides poor job performance, too little sleep has been linked with obesity and cardiovascular disease, the report noted.
Those with night jobs face a particular challenge in getting enough sleep. "Attempts to sleep during daylight hours, when melatonin levels decline and body temperature rises, usually result in shorter sleep episodes and more wakefulness," the report said.
Companies should implement ways to improve workers' chances for enough sleep, the report said. For example, training programs on sleep and working hours can be tailored for managers and employees, and work shifts can be designed in ways to improve sleep opportunities.
New research from the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Center suggests that the less sleep you get, the more genes contribute to how much you weigh. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
The reports of sleep-deprived workers varied by industry, with manufacturing faring among the worst. The CDC said 34.1 percent of manufacturing workers reported not getting enough sleep.
When the results were broken down by age group, the findings showed people in the middle of their working years were most likely to report less than six hours of sleep a night: about 32 percent of people between the ages of 30 and 64, compared with 26.5 percent of those ages 18-29, and 21.7 percent of those 65 and older.
There were also differences among races. Black workers (38.9 percent), and Asian workers (33.2 percent) were significantly more likely to report short sleeps than white workers (28.6 percent) or Hispanic workers (28.8 percent), the report said.
People who were widowed, divorced, or separated were significantly more likely to report sleeping than six hours (36.4 percent) than with workers who were married (29.4 percent) or had never been married (28.2 percent).
The results are based on the data gathered during 2009 and 2010 in the National Health Interview Survey, for which a nationally representative sample of more than 15,000 adults were interviewed in their homes. The report was limited in that the data relied on people's own reports of how much sleep they get.
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Not a very surprising finding here, workers have been forced to increase productivity over the past decade. Prior to being let go at my old job, I worked 8-5 M-F then 5pm Friday until 2am Sunday....if nothing went wrong with the computer systems. Otherwise, I'd be working straight through until Sunday night...then try to go to bed early enough to recharge myself for another week of the same. It's tough finding time for sleep sometimes.
How exactly do they expect us to sleep, when we are trying to support the other 2/3rds....sshhhhssshhh
Actually, I only work half-days four days a week and am on call for the rest (12 hours is half a day)...
Well...in reality, all you're doing is supporting the record profits of major corporations, that increase in productivity allows them to forgo new hires, pay you the same as always, and fatten their wallets. Really has very little to do with the unemployed, honestly. I mean, it's not like taxes have gone up anytime in the past what...20 years?
Well...in real reality, I might be doing that but that isn't all i'm doing...I'm also supporting myself and my family, providing them with the things they need, with enough leftover, for a little cusion for a rainy day / week...I understand though...many people consider that nothing...especially those who think someone else should be doing those things for them
So can we count of you building and maintaining your own roads, providing your own fire protection, educationg your children at home, etc., any time soon?
Well, I certainly don't feel that supporting a family is nothing...it's difficult and in this market can be extremely stressful, but absolutely worth it. You're still thinking that somehow the US workforce is working more because of the unemployed...and that's simply untrue. Taxes have steadily gone down for years and years, the workforce has contracted dramatically, and yet taxes have remained at these lows. Which means your income isn't being affected any more than it has in the past. The only thing that's different is the wages of previously employed workers are being shifted upwards to the higher echelon's of management, increasing their pay or simply going to company surplus.
Either way, profits are at record levels for businesses, so they could afford hiring new employees to take some of the burden off of their existing force. But, it's far more lucrative to make fewer employees work harder, sleep less, in order to stretch their bottom line.
@ Severed Head in a Jar: Not sure who you're talking to, but I worked my arse of for 9 years at the same company (70-120 hour weeks for 4-5 of those years), so I've put my fair share into the system. Believe me, I'd love to be working right now and I spend the majority of my days looking for a new job.
How can you sleep, when you're working 3 minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet.
Isn't Republican job creation nice?
MSNBC, still doesn't know the difference between a race and the descendent of a nationality, like most journalists:
So, MSNBC, how many 'races' are you including under 'Hispanics?'
Typical ignorance. Anyway, the point of the article is about sleep and people don't really get enough. I just don't think we're a society that encourages it. There's always one more thing to do, to watch, to listen to, and so on. Health is not really the very top priority of most people it seems.
Last week it was Obama's Job Creation...and today it is the Republican Job Creation???? Boy your party must just looovve you
@severed head...Don't worry I'll continuing funding all those things for me and my kids, and I'll chip in your share also...don't worry I wont ask them to call me daddy
@BMurphy....noone is immune to hard times, and I hope yours end soon, and there should always be help available for the inevitable rough patch...but what really, really, really gets my goat is the increasing belief of some, that somehow you (not you) are entitled to a portion of someone elses earnings...and though you are correct there is no direct small picture cause and effect, there is however a direct big picture correlation between the percentage of Americans riding on the back of the Economy and the work load of those pushing and/or pulling the economy
and if the truth were told...I think people on newsvine, complaining about lack of sleep, need to wake up....just saying
I work about 70 hours a week and I get plenty of sleep, on the drive to and from work. On a drive home from work once, I drove like the last 11 miles asleep at the wheel. I could not recall how I got there. I sure hope I didn't hit anyone along the way. Good times. Good memories.
I did that once...I was driving from 29Palms to Fort Worth...one minute I was in the middle of nowhere and the next I was in bumper to bumper traffic 5 mile past my exit....
@ Pheaniques: It's a difficult situation really, I mean, I agree that there are plenty of abusers of the system (both inside and out), hell, I know there are. That place I worked at for 9 years ran Medicaid for the State I live in. I got to see first hand plenty of waste, as well as suspected waste/fraud. The really sad and aggravating thing is, it would require so much effort on the Government's side to actually police the entitlements properly, people would complain about the size of Government (believe me, you'd have to have private investigators for allot of it...people are really good at acting the lie).
Maybe I'm a bit too soft, but, I also kind of have a problem with the idea of putting people out on the Street. You know? But how to motivate people who are abusing the system to get off of it? As I said, a difficult situation.
I have a solution for healthcare...if you are interested in it, I'll post it again...The problem with most Government Programs is that the fraud waste and abuse are intentionally built into the systems by politicians trying to get re-elected...and I think the most effective, humane way to "encourage" the riders to get off, is to make being a rider the single most embarrasing thing an American can do...When I was a teen, my Dad got lay-ed off (texas oil bust), he wouldn't talk about it then, and I wouldn't ask him about it now...but i'm pretty sure we were recieving some kind of assistance, and i could tell it was tearing him up, only time I ever saw my Dad openly cry...Today it seems to be a badge of honor for many...
Yeah. You can't swing an off-shore tax shelter without hitting some smug bastard driving a 93 Lumina with "My child is on food stamps" sticker.
Have you ever been to Europe? Do you realise how happy most Europeans are with their government funded health care?
My toddler's teething is the main reason for me not getting enough sleep. When those last molars finally come in I'll be able to get over 6 solid hours almost every night! :)
I would have to echo B Murphy. It would get to the point where I was becoming the walking dead. Family, friends and co-workers would avoid me because I was such a bear. But my managements reply was...deal with it. Life in America is unmatched but at what costs?
Ayup, well, they burned me out completely, I made a mistake and was let go. Mistakes made on both sides, but yeah, there's not a whole lot you can do when your employers simply require the added work.
The Obama administration should regulate this as well and force employers to now pay for sleep hygiene courses. Cause we are all too stupid to know how much sleep we need!
How about force employers to have an afternoon snack and nap session......you know like when we were six .....
It's actually been shown that allowing employees to take a short nap actually increases productivity because the gain brought on by the brief nap outweighs what is lost in those few minutes. But executives being the stupid, short-sighted people they are, that will never happen.
Or too overloaded to get the sleep we know we need?
Join the proverbial club of those who actually work for a living ......
wow. I heard that 100% of gamers are lacking in sleep too...
Buying drugs or getting a tattoo; no those people are on welfare.
Man, let me get my hands on that cute doctor for an hour, and I'll sleep like a rock afterwards...!
Spending too much time walking around gated communities wearing a hoodie?
Anyone who work in the IT field like myself tends to not get enough sleep. I always have deadlines looming and then combine that with being on call and you tend to not get as much as you want. You have to love the 2 a.m. phone calls from server alerts.
I also have the situation of skydiving regularly as a tandem instructor after my 8-5 job which cuts down on my time of being home so I am more willing to stay up later in order to spend more time awake with my wife.
This article may be accurate but I am more than willing to be the first to accept the consequences of the jobs I work and I will not place the blame on the corporations but on myself. I believe that people have the ability to set aside 8 hours of sleep a night...it's just they choose not to for other reasons, most of those reasons being family or leisure time.
The left wing liberal way is to blame it on someone else. You must be a Conservative.
Trolling again, Dean?
Have fun.
Of course he's conservative @Dean - he said he works. :-p
single dad of a 3 yr old. work 10 hrs a night till 2am then have to get up at 8:30 or so with the boy. Its rough but whaddya do? won't be forever he will be going to school soon maybe i can go back to bed after he gets on the bus... man i can't wait for that
Hardly surprising considering American workers also work the hardest and longest.
This country has a big problem with 12 hour shifts! Its time to hire some people, dammit! It's so very wrong to make employees work overtime instead of bringing in new blood. Just wrong!
...and this isn't even counting in the university students, like me, who have a full course load and two jobs. As a very wise friend posted on facebook recently: "I had no idea at 14 that getting 4-5 hours of sleep would be normal just a few years later". University, it seems, you can chose only one thing: Social life, good grades or enough sleep. Not two, and definitely not all three. It's one reason that I only take the bus, there is no way that I am going to drive either at 7am or at 9:30pm after only 5 hours of sleep. More than one of my friends has been in a car accident due to being tired, and a few years ago, a fellow student DIED from a car crash on her way to the university. Whether it was from being tired, we will not know, but as I get on the bus every morning and start getting tired (again), I remind myself that the worst thing that can happen if you fall asleep on the bus is that you miss your stop and maybe show up late to the university. I'll take that over the possibility of a collision anyday. Plus, $61 a month for my student transit pass is pennies compared to gas, car repairs and a university parking pass.
That is so true!!! I take a full course load at my university AND am the primary caregiver for my disabled husband, and have a son with autism and a teenage daughter. Then I also do work-study at the VA hospital. 5-6 classes per semester along with my other obligations means that I leave for school at 6:30am for school return around 4:30pm, then help the kids with their homework, make dinner, help the hubby, clean up, get the kids to bed and then I get to study for my classes from 10pm-2am. Then back up again at 5:30am. It's tough BUT it is worth it. I will graduate with a bachelors degree in nursing and already be used to weird wacky hours.
It is only worth it, because you are a selfless human being. I hope you have a wonderful, fantastic career. All that said, people in the healthcare profession are not treated as well as they should be. Hopefully you will be.
The bad part of healthcare is that nurses are not always considered healthcare professionals. We tend to be college educated second class workers. What I think is funny is that many nurses I know have more education than Physician Assistants and they get more respect.
As for sleep..... I have turned into a Coffee Goddess! Can't live without it!!!
The whole problem is that people are corporate servants now. Little vacation, crazy hours and the expectation and threat that come from these corporate criminals. The expectation of ridiculous productivity while putting the corporation above anything else while the threat of "well there are many people looking for work" over our heads. Labor isn't valued anymore.
We are indentured servants to the corporate monolith. Cogs in a machine to make the rich even richer at our own detriment. Its absurd. If wages would have kept up with what they use to be or even productivity we wouldn't need to put up with this nonsense. We don't now really. There is just little to no collective labor movement in this country because our corporate masters do not like opposition so they divide and conquer.
With companies only concerned about not losing even one one hundredth of a percent of profit this is not surprising. This is yet another consequence of valuing profit over human beings.
Stress and technology. Now that many of us have computers at home, there always seems to be something we need to or should be doing on them. Being unemployed is especially hard. One can lay in bed haunted by the fact that they did not search every job site their is. I do that every night.
And the rest are sleeping just fine. On the job...
I'm lucky if I get 6 hours of sleep a night.
That is lucky. I am luckier, I am a Pathologist and I know the names of most of my family members. Yeah, us physicians are rich, yeah right!
If your job is causing you to lose enough sleep that it is negatively impacting your health, then the smart thing to do would be to change jobs before it kills you. As the old saying goes - You never see a headstone inscribed with the words "I wish I had spent more time at work". I worked the graveyard shift for five years, and when it got to the point that it became clear to me it was ruining my health, I demanded to be put back on the day shift, and they complied. I have never worked those hours regularly since then. Occasionally, yes, but not every day. Shift work can kill you.