'Always On,' How Workers Are Suffering From 'Infinite' Work

Newsweek

23-06-2025

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Though "Infinite Workday," might sound like the title of a sci-fi film, it's a reality for many Americans, according to a recent report from Microsoft. The tech giant released their 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report this week, which highlighted the relentless nature of the modern workday.
Newsweek spoke to the experts to find out more about the "infinite workday," and how they are impacting Americans.
The Context
The phrase infinite workday refers to being constantly connected to work, from dawn until late at night.
A spokesperson for Microsoft told Newsweek that "The infinite workday perfectly speaks to how we all feel. Work has reached peak inefficiency, and we can't look away."
Composite image of a stressed worker, a clock, a laptop and a note reading, "Back to work."
Composite image of a stressed worker, a clock, a laptop and a note reading, "Back to work."
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva
What To Know
Microsoft reported that the average employee receives 117 work emails each day, 153 Teams messages each day, has 2 minutes between interruptions (be it a meeting, call or message) and that 57 percent of meetings are called in the moment and do not have a calendar invite.
In an email shared with Newsweek, a Microsoft spokesperson said that U.S. users average 155 chat messages per person each day, which is just above the global average.
U.S. workers averaged 155 chat messages per person per day—just above the global average of 153. For email, U.S. workers send an average of 120 emails per person per day, which again is just above the global average.
The intensity of the workday comes at a time when workplace satisfaction is increasingly low. In May of 2025, Glassdoor released their Employee Confidence Index and found that only 44 percent of U.S. workers feel optimistic about their company's prospects—the lowest reading ever recorded.
Gallup meanwhile reported in a 2024 that employee engagement was at a 10-year low, with enthusiasm and involvement both dropping sharply.
Meanwhile, The State of the Workforce Report from MeQuilibrium, which analyzed findings from 5,477 employees across various industries, found that 35 percent of employees feel worse about their work situation and 49 percent feel worse about their finance.
Why Is Work Stress So Prevalent in America?
Though Microsoft's study is not country specific, the problem of the infinite workday is a pervasive one for Americans.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average working week for all employees, including part time employees in private industries as of 2022 was 34.5 hours.
Though the Fair Labor Standards Act sets a standard workweek of 40 hours, for most U.S. workers, there is no federal limit on how many hours you can work in a week.
Newsweek spoke to Juliet Schor author of Four Days a Week: The Life-Changing Solution for Reducing Employee Stress, Improving Well-Being and Working Smarter.
"U.S. workers have longer hours than people in other high-income countries," she told Newsweek via email. As for the factors driving this, Schor pointed to a "lack of legal protections to turn off devices, high numbers of companies with outsourced teams so there's a need to work across time zones, weak levels of unionization, long hours culture and high health care costs borne by employers."
Newsweek also spoke to Ellen Ernst Kossek, distinguished professor emerita of management at Purdue University, who said that U.S. culture itself, "Really emphasizes work," and that "The U.S. identity is linked really heavily to work."
She highlighted the right to request flexible working and right to disconnect laws in other countries like the U.K. and said that by comparison the U.S. is more "always on," and that there is an expectation to be online.
Vili Lehdonvirta, professor of technology Policy in the Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland, echoed this point. "In many sectors, like technology and finance, there is an expectation that workers should be available to their employers also outside formal working hours, and this norm is probably stronger in the U.S. than in many places in Europe."
Lehdonvirta pointed to different technology adaptations and urban planning as playing a potential role in this. He said that mobile devices like Slack and Microsoft Teams makes "always-on culture easier to enact in practice."
Speaking to Newsweek over email, Stewart Friedman, emeritus practice professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Norms about boundaries between work and the rest of life vary across countries and they are resistant to change."
He said that though people in the U.S. work longer than those in Europe, they are "less burdened," by work than people in South Korea or Japan. "The values underlying national or regional cultures play a big role in determining expectations about the parts of life to which we allocate our attention."
How 'Always On' Work Culture Negatively Impacts Employees
We know that workers are indeed always on, but how is this impacting them?
For Schor, the risks are clear. "Workers burn out, have health problems and as a result do lower quality work and are more likely to quit," she said
Lehdonvirta told Newsweek, "Studies suggest that workers in an always-on work culture experience more work-home-interference, fatigue, and other negative consequences."
A 2019 study from Myers-Briggs surveyed 1,000 people about always-on culture and found that people who were able to access calls and emails for work outside of hours were more engaged in their job, but more stressed.
The study found that 28 percent of always on employees said they couldn't mentally switch off, while 20 percent reported mental exhaustion.
According to Lehdonvirta, the consequences of this vary. "Worker-controlled flexibility over when to carry out duties can even be a positive thing for combining work with other commitments. Organizational culture and the behavior of supervisors as role models matters," he said.
"People do have different styles of working," Kossek said, noting that people may work out of hours to enable taking breaks at other times in order to help balance work-life responsibilities.
"There is a risk to working odd hours," Kossek said, noting that "We can make unhealthy choices," such aa checking emails on weekends or vacations when it's not an emergency.
Kossek highlighted that workers are also bringing the job home with them. "Think about two hands going back and forth, representing emails and texts going into crossing borders into home, home into work," she said,
There is a "high pattern of integration here," Kossek said, and likened the amalgamation of work and home life to trying to text while driving.
The Entry of Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft's report comes as the world of work is being rapidly changed by the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence. AI is a polarizing topic—some liken it to a new industrial revolution, while others are sounding the alarm on ethical and environmental concerns.
But how will it impact the workplace? Will this new technology rebalance the rhythm of the working day, or will it hit the gas pedal on an already unsustainable work pace?
A spokesperson for Microsoft told Newsweek "At a time when nearly every leader is trying to do more with less, we have a real opportunity—not to speed up a broken system, but to refocus on the 20 percent of work that drives 80 percent of the impact, to reorganize into flatter, more agile teams, and to pause long enough to learn how to use AI—not just to support the work, but to transform it."
Schor though, said that "AI can go either way."
"It can lead to job stress, unemployment and higher productivity requirements. But it can also be a way to enhance productivity," she said.
Lehdonvirta shared a similar sentiment. "It depends entirely on what they can do," he said, adding that if these tools "genuinely help people," to off-load tasks then they could help to achieve "sustainable working styles."
However, "If they become yet another notification that interrupts you, or yet another inbox that needs to be dealt with, then the consequences may be different."
Friedman told Newsweek, "To the extent that AI tools give greater freedom and flexibility in determining how we allocate our attention to the people and projects about which we care the most, then they can be useful in helping us produce greater harmony and impact as leaders in all the different parts of our lives."
What's Next
The workforce is rapidly changing, but more change may need to come to tackle always on culture.
"We have to come up with new norms for managing, when we're on and when we're off work and new ways of communicating," Kossek said.
Schor said, "When workloads increase, reducing hours can often make it easier to do all the work," this is because "people are most rested and less burned out."
A good work life balance is key in this, but it takes commitment.
"People are trying to be great employees, but also have a rich personal life," Kossek said.
Friedman told Newsweek that "learning how to manage boundaries between different parts of life," like "work, home, community," is possible. But "it takes conscious effort and continual experimentation."