A recent research reveals that when you have additional time sleeping can increase your productivity and could raise your salary, but people struggle at work due to inadequate night sleep.
A study from two institutions – Williams College in Massachusetts and the University of California at San Diego shows that a one-hour increase in sleep each week can raise wages by about half as much as an additional year of education.
Matthew Gibson and Jeffrey Shrader, who led the research, said that, “These results suggest that sleep is a crucial determinant of wages, rivaling ability and human capital in importance. But it isn’t simply a case of squeezing in an extra hour and expecting the money to roll in.
“Instead, it is more a subtle interaction between how people schedule their lives, how much time they have to sleep, and how that affects their performance at work.”
During the research, “a different time across the US was used to perform the study. Pre-study had shown that early sunsets in winter cause people to sleep longer as against those that live where the sun sets an hour later. They tend to sleep about 20 minutes less per week.”
The study used the significant differences between workers across the time zone to estimate how much sleep affects wages. “Their results showed that an hour of extra sleep each week increases wages by five per cent, which equates to an additional $1,570 (£1,252) a year for the average American.
“If workers around you are having better sleep, and therefore being more productive at work, it could rub off on you, making you more productive too. Our wage regressions demonstrate that sleep has a powerful impact on labor market outcomes and should be considered an integral part of a worker’s utility maximisation problem.”