The Workday Is Shorter, But Productivity Is Up: New Study | Entrepreneur
In 2025, the traditional “9 to 5” is looking a little more like an “8 to 4.”
ActivTrak’s newly released 2025 State of the Workplace report found that the average American workday is ending at around 4:39 p.m. and starting at around 8 a.m. Meanwhile, the report notes that two years ago, people weren’t leaving their desks (or home offices) until around 5:21 p.m.
“These are healthy numbers,” said Gabriela Mauch, the head of ActivTrak’s Productivity Lab, per Bloomberg. “We’ve adapted to a traditional workday on average while offering flexibility and fluidity in a way that meets employees where they are.”
Related: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Says Only One Group Is Complaining About Returning to the Office
ActivTrak looked at data on nearly 200,000 employees working at 777 companies, tracking workplace behaviors from productivity bursts to clock-out times. The data revealed that productivity has gone up by about 2%, and employees tend to work in productive 24-minute bursts.
The months with the most hours worked (around nine a day on average) were August and December. Mauch noted to Bloomberg that August was due to a post-vacation work rush and December because of the end-of-year push. February and October, meanwhile, had the shortest workday lengths (8 hours and 35 minutes), according to the report.
And despite the major return-to-office push, the report found a big win for fully remote employees: They are the most productive workers.
“Remote-only workers have the highest daily productivity (+29 mins) vs. other worker types,” the report notes.
