--- title: "Employees Who Use AI End Up Working Vastly More Time Per Day" description: "A new workplace efficiency survey found heavy AI users are spending as much as 90 minutes more at work per day." date: "2026-11-08" modified: "2026-11-08" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-workplace-working-hours-productivity-analysis" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Machine Learning" --- # Employees Who Use AI End Up Working Vastly More Time Per Day ![Tired male office worker working late at night, using desktop computer.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* The world's capitalists have been waiting with bated breath for the day AI finally delivers on the [tech industry's longstanding promise]() to create a tool more efficient than human workers. In the four years since AI first became broadly available as a commercial product, these productivity returns have mostly [failed to materialize](). Now, there're signs that the push to automate labor is actually backfiring in ironic fashion, as workers who've been forced to adopt AI tools are becoming less efficient as time goes on. A [new analysis]() published by the workplace surveillance company ActivTrak, first [covered by *Gizmodo*](), found that white collar workers who use AI put in up to 90 minutes more work each day compared to non-users. To arrive at that blistering number, company analysts looked at anonymized work activity from over 9,100 employees at over 450 companies from the period between April and September. For non-AI users observed over that time, the average active workday was 7.6 hours — compared to between 8.4 and 9.1 hours for heavy AI users. For workers, the findings may add to the body of evidence suggesting that sorting through [AI-generated slop]() takes more time than it would to just do workplace tasks by hand. It could also point to the fact that employers aren't necessarily using AI to replace jobs wholesale, but as [an excuse]() to demand even more labor per worker regardless of any true efficiency gains. From a management point of view, the findings suggest that heavy AI users are having to spend extra billable time working after hours, while experiencing a higher frequency of interrupted work than light- or non-AI users. As head of ActivTrak's productivity research division Gabriela Mauch wrote in the company's press report, AI "may help employees complete tasks faster, but our research shows it contributes to longer workdays, more application switching and shorter focus sessions." **More on AI:** *[There Are Now Growing Signs That AI Is Hurting Employment in the Job Market]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]() ## More - [AI Is Forcing Employees to Work Harder Than Ever]() - [Employees Long for the Days Before the Workplace Filled Up With AI Slop]() - [Accenture CEO Says It’s Sacking Employees Who Won’t Embrace AI]() - [The Number of People Using AI at Work Is Suddenly Falling]() - [Meta Exec Rages Against Employees Asking for More Time Off Because AI Made Them More Efficient]() - [People With This Level of Education Use AI the Most at Work]() - [Workers Are Spending An Astonishing Amount of Their Own Money On AI for Their Jobs]() - [Amazon Employees Forced to Hit Quotas on AI Use, Immediately Start Using it for Everything Except Work]()