If you are an average worker, the answer is 2.09 hours per workday, according to a new survey by America Online and Salary.com. The survey shows "that employees are wasting about twice as much time as their employers suspect."

According to Salary.com's calculations, employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected and not actually performed. That calculates to be $5,720 in wasted salary dollars per year, per worker.

Where's all this time going? Surfing the internet for personal reasons leads the list. Almost 45 percent of more than 10,000 persons polled say this is their number one time-wasting activity. Socializing (23 percent) and conducting personal business (6.8 percent) are numbers two and three on the list. Also, listed are spacing out, running errands, applying for other jobs, planning personal events arriving late/ leaving early.

By the way, the Salary.com survey shows that persons born between the years of 1980 and 1985 waste nearly four times as much time on the job as do those born from 1930 to 1949.

There're Opportunities In These Statistics

These statistics spell O P P O R T U N I T I E S. Just suppose you cut the average time wasted from two hours per day to one hour. That means if you work five days per week, you could easily add five hours a week to your productivity. In a 50-week work year, you would be gaining 250 hours or over 31 eight-hour days of productive time. I have to believe the things you could accomplish in those 31 plus days would certainly show up on the positive side of your annual review and lift you above the average.

About the author:

Ramon Greenwood is former senior vice president of American Express; a professional director for various businesses; a consultant; a published author of career related books and a syndicated column. Senior career counselor for http://www.CommonSenseAtWork.com Visit Ramon at his website, http://www.CommonSenseAtWork.com, to sign up for his free semimonthly newsletter or contact him at ramon@CommonSenseAtWork.com