Northeast workers use email more than rest of country

A recent study reveals workers in different states use email differently and at different times of day.

It's hardly a secret that people spend an insane amount of time on email. Every day, businesspeople send 212 billion emails. If those emails were printed out on paper, they'd encircle the earth roughly 1,600 times. Note that's every DAY.

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Maybe it's not surprising that a disproportionate amount of those emails come from the northeast corner of the United States, according to a recent survey of 1,000 businessfolk conducted by the email marketing service provider ReachMail.

Take the amount of time that workers are connected to email, for instance. About 30% of American workers have their email program open constantly. In the Northeast, however, that figure swells to 37%.

In the high-tech haven of Massachusetts, though, a whopping 68% of workers have their email program open all the time. By contrast, most workers who reside in Arizona and Texas check their emails only about once a day, on average.

There are similar differences in the amount of emails sent. Nearly half of American send fewer than 10 emails a day. In the Northeast, however, the average is 22 emails a day, more than twice the national average.

Once again, Massachusetts tops the chart, with the average worker sending 28 emails a day, while workers in the Western United States average a measly 18 emails per day. (Since that figure includes California, the non-coastal percentage is truly miniscule.)

There are also regional differences in how long it takes for workers to answer emails. 58% of American answer emails within a single hour while a third of workers in New York State take at least 6 hours.

The study revealed some other interesting email quirks. Workers in the Beehive State (Utah) are the earliest in the nation to get onto email, with the average worker opening the first email at 6:30 am. The state where workers log off email the latest? Sleepy Tennessee.

Perhaps surprisingly, most Americans have less than 10 unanswered emails in their Inbox. Workers in laid-back South Carolina have the most unanswered emails, 29 on average, while a third of worker in (again) Tennessee have 100 that are unanswered.

It's clear from these statistics that Northeast elites are generally more "plugged in" (if less prompt) than their counterparts in the so-called flyover states. Maybe that explains why the Northeast is losing political and business power?