Night Shift: US Workers Getting Less Sleep

Nearly a third of workers in the U.S. aren't getting enough sleep, according to a new government report released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, 30 percent of employed U.S. adults reported getting less than six hours of sleep a night, according to the CDC. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that healthy adults get seven to nine hours of sleep.

People who usually work the night shift — especially those in transportation, warehousing, health care and social assistance industries — were more likely than day-shift workers to report not getting enough sleep. Forty-four percent of the night shift workers participating in the survey said they got less than six hours of sleep, compared with 29 percent of workers with day shifts.

In Herkimer County about one out of every twenty workers works a late or night shift. In Oneida County almost one in twelve workers works the late or night shift. The table below shows the time that workers leave for work in both counties for both the Census 2000 and the American Communities Survey Five Year Estimate covering 2006-2010.