You snooze, you gain: Sleep deprivation in a country’s workforce can result in a significant drop in productivity, as well as USD bns in economic losses each year, according to a comparative analysis study conducted by Rand Health Quarterly. The study, which looked at five OECD countries — the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and Canada — studied the effects of sleep deprivation on these countries’ GDPs and labor productivity.

Just how big are the losses we’re talking about? In these five countries alone, the study estimated the economic losses due to people getting insufficient sleep — less than six hours per night — stood at USD 680 bn per year, according to the Rand study.

What’s the consensus on what “enough” sleep is? Adults typically need at least seven hours of sleep per night, with an optimal range of seven to nine hours per 24-hour window, according to the CDC. Consistently sleeping fewer than seven hours per night can lead to reduced productivity, reduced ability to concentrate, slowed response speeds, and lower quality of decisions. Exhibit A: One of the factors that led to the Chernobyl nuclear explosion of 1985 was insufficient sleep, as per the United State’s Senate’s committee on Energy and Natural resources.

Underslept employees are costly for business: Productivity loss among workers getting less than six hours of sleep per night is reportedly 2.4 percentage points higher than among those who get the recommended seven to nine hours, the analysis says. “To put these numbers into perspective, assuming there are 250 working days in a given year, this means that a worker sleeping less than six hours loses around 6 working days due to absenteeism or presenteeism per year more than a worker sleeping seven to nine hours. A person sleeping six to seven hours loses on average about 3.7 working days more per year.”

Let’s put that into monetary terms: For a company of 1k employees in the US, avoiding productivity losses caused by workers not getting enough sleep could save some USD 2.52 mn, according to LYS Technologies.

The situation appears to be most dire in the US, where the percentage of people getting less than six hours per night (18%) is the highest out of the five countries. Japan and the UK each reported 16% of people getting under six hours of sleep per night, while Germany reported 9% and that number falls to 6% in Canada. With the largest labor force of the five countries (121.5 mn full-time workers and 27.3 mn part-time workers), the US is estimated to be losing nearly 10 mn hours (1.23 mn working days) of work productivity every year due to undersleeping. Japan comes in second, with 4.8 mn hours or 600k working days lost.

Critically, these losses compound over time, “even if we assume constant proportions of short sleepers in the future,” the Rand analysis notes. “The overall costs increase slightly in magnitude over time … as the mortality effect of insufficient sleep leads to reductions in the labor supply. That is, the death of a worker does not only affect the year the death occurs, but continues to be a part of the costs in subsequent years because of the loss of all potential future offspring.

What can be done? The study suggests that much of the burden of responsibility falls back on employers: They need to target the obstacles to good sleep and provide their working capital with policies to improve it. Aside from the commonly circulated advice of sleeping in a cool room, no lights, and no noise, certain changes in employees’ lifestyles would go a long way, including imposing a clear cut-off point for answering emails, calls, and work related messages afterwork and during the weekend reduces exposure to electronic devices. Other measures that could prove helpful include helping employees clock the recommended weekly target of 150 minutes of physical activity to improve physical and mental health (ideally by providing access to an in-house gym), as well as keeping the availability of caffeinated and sugary beverages to a minimum.

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