Economy & Wages

Both changing to Daylight Saving Time and remaining on DST have high economic costs, which manifest as stock-market disruption, lost productivity, workplace injuries, healthcare expenses, and overall lower earnings.12345

Workplace injuries in US laborers increase 5.7% in the days after moving clocks forward to DST in spring, due to the sudden loss of an average of 40 minutes of sleep. Injuries increase in severity too, resulting in 67.6% more days lost after moving clocks forward.6 US office productivity drops 20% upon the springtime clock change to DST, for a loss of $434M annually nationwide.78 Stocks drop 200 to 500% more than usual the Monday after moving clocks forward to DST, at a cost of $31B in the US.9 These injuries, missed days, lost productivity, and stock losses don’t reoccur in the autumn return to Standard Time, nor are they ever recouped.689

Economic losses continue under DST beyond the springtime clock change, as seen in data from western and eastern edges of time zones, where sunsets and sunrises naturally differ by an hour. One added hour of sunlight in evenings and its corresponding lost hour in mornings reduce sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes nightly.9101112 This continual loss of sleep every night manifests as health problems (at a cost of $2.35B annually in the US), as lost productivity (totaling 4.4M lost work days, at a cost of $613M annually nationwide), and even as lower earnings (3.0 to 4.9% less than in neighboring counties with a one-hour earlier sunset and sunrise). An increase in average nightly sleep by a full hour can increase earnings by the same amount as half a year of added education would, and it can increase productivity more than an entire year of added education.131415

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