Significant Number of Workers Asleep on the Job But Not in Iowa

So if you hear dead air, just assume I dozed off because I didn't get enough sleep.

It's a crazy time in the world these days and "work/life balance" has become more important yet more elusive than ever. It's a time when folks are holding on for dear life to their jobs because they see so many others having theirs fall by the wayside. It leads to long hours at the office (or home office). It's well documented that lack of proper sleep can impact our effectiveness on the job, to the point where a new survey says 1 in 4 people actually fall asleep AT WORK.

According to a YouGov poll, how many times have you fallen asleep at work?

"I haven't": 66%
Several times: 13%
Once: 10%
I haven't worked: 6%
Don't know: 4%

Our friends at Zippia then looked at the states with the most workers who have fallen asleep on the job. The first thing they found was that 70 percent of workers do not get enough sleep, and naturally, night shift workers have it worse, getting less than 6 hours.

Believe it or not, HAWAII is the state with the most sleep-deprived workers, followed by Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Maryland.

Here in the midwest, we are pretty good at making sure we get our zzzz's. South Dakota, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, and Nebraska are the Top 5 LEAST sleep-deprived states, with us here in Iowa falling just outside at #6. Other midwest states from most to least sleep-deprived were:

#7: Indiana
#9: Michigan
#26: Illinois
#30: Missouri
#37: Wisconsin
#42: Kansas
#45: Iowa

How they came up with their findings

They started by defining "insufficient sleep" as 6 hours or less and only counted people who get that consistently. One bad night or even week of sleep did not count as sleep-deprived. Expect these numbers of workers falling asleep on the job to only rise after we "fall back" from Daylight Saving Time in a few days.