Workers in the logistics sector have the highest burnout risk among U.S. laborers, leading all industries with 20% of workers overutilized and 15% at risk of burnout, according to a study from workforce analytics software provider ActivTrak.
Texas-based ActivTrak says the term “overutilization” refers to an employee who exceeds their daily productive hours goal by more than 30%, based on thresholds set by their employer. And “burnout risk” applies to employees who spend more than 75% of their time overutilized annually.
The firm’s “ActivTrak Productivity Lab” study also found that logistics has the longest workday at 9 hours and 10 minutes, coming in at 26 minutes longer than the cross-industry average.
The Productivity Lab studied three years of anonymized workplace data spanning 23 industries, including 774 companies and 218,900 employees. The findings reflect user activity behavior for 2,190 logistics employees compared to their cross-industry peers, from January 1, 2022 to December 18, 2024.
Other results showed that:
- Logistics workers log the most daily productive time at 7 hours 3 minutes, 46 minutes longer than the overall average
- Logistics workers rank second in daily collaboration time at 56 minutes, averaging 18 minutes longer than the overall average
- 72% of logistics workers adopted AI tools in 2024, the most across industries studied
- Logistics employees have the highest daily AI usage, nearly 3 minutes longer than the overall average
“Logistics leaders face a double-edged sword: their teams demonstrate the highest daily productivity and AI adoption in the workforce, yet they’re also at the greatest risk of burnout,” ActivTrak’s Head of Productivity Lab and Chief Customer Officer, Gabriela Mauch, said in a release. “Amid external pressures like rising tariffs, sustaining performance requires smarter workload design — redistributing tasks, managing collaboration overload and ensuring AI isn’t just adding efficiency, but also alleviating pressure.”
