Consulting firm Challenger Gray and Christmas says that the impeachment hearings could be costing employers $2.1 billion each hour their workers log on or tune in to find what’s happening during the impeachment hearings.
Here’s how the firm came to that conclusion, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
- The average hourly wage is $28.18, according to preliminary October information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- The number of Americans who use the internet at work is more than 90.1 million, based on 2017 data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
- The total of employed Americans who work on an average weekday is 89%, a 2018 Time Use Survey by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.
- A recent Challenger survey indicates 94% of workers discuss politics at work.
Crunching that data, the firm estimated the number of internet-using workers who are interested in politics and likely to watch or follow updates on the impeachment hearing is 75,402,982. That total, multiplied by the average hourly wage of $28.18, amounts to more than $2.1 billion — the total estimated cost of lost productivity to employers per hour of employees following the impeachment hearings.