March Madness will cost $17.3 billion in lost work

By Clare Fonstein of The Houston Chronicle. Excerpts: 

"Focusing on work when there’s a national basketball tournament underway might be difficult for some employees, and that distraction will end up costing businesses a decent chunk of change, a new report states.

March Madness is expected to cost employers $17.3 billion in lost productivity this year, $1 billion more than 2022, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and career transitioning firm that has published calculations of March Madness productivity loss in the past. The 2023 projected losses are the highest the company has recorded. Because of increasing employment and wages, the total losses have risen from last year, the report states."

"The total is generated based on an estimation of U.S. workers likely caught up in March Madness and the time spent making brackets or watching games. That total is then calculated with average hourly earnings, arriving at the whopping $17.3 billion."

"About 48 percent of workers use company time to build their brackets, according to a 2018 TSheets survey."

"Employees tend to spend on average 25.5 minutes each day doing March Madness-related activities while the tournament is going on"

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"During the opening week of March Madness, the firm estimated employers experienced $615 million per hour in lost productivity as people watched games and highlights, set up pool brackets and avidly tracked their standings rather than performed actual work."