The State of Work 2025

What Work Truly Matters?

We analyzed work time across thousands of professionals. Scan the highlights below, then download the report for full details.

The Invisible Workday

Our analysis shows that ~30% of professional work is never recorded in a system of record. This work has been invisible—until now.

This 28% translates to around 3 hours of work per day that generate zero revenue.

Approximately 11% of this unsubmitted time is work that should have been billed.

At an average billable rate of $400/hr, firms are losing ~$26k per professional annually.

The Revelation

Finally, organizations can understand the scope of invisible work. And they can use this insight to understand which work creates value and which tasks should be automated.

The Displacement Effect

We also found that 28.2% of all work happens outside 9am-5pm, and examined what kind of work is happening when.

April 2025

12.7% of all work happens before 9am, and this work skews heavily towards meetings and calls.

62.9% of time worked during business hours is spent communicating via meetings, chat, email, calls.

Professionals average 20.4 total hours of focused work—document preparation, analysis, etc.—per week.

And almost half of that time spent on focus work each week—10.1 hours—occurs after 5pm.

The Revelation

We see how professional work is evolving beyond traditional boundaries. There's more flexibility in work hours, but also a clear demand to stay productive beyond the 9-to-5 window.

"We realized our interruptions weren't just distractions — they were a systemic cost. Laurel’s data helped us redesign our communication channels to protect the focused time our team needs."

• Corporate Associate, Lawfirm

The Crisis of Partial Focus

More than half of all work activities are communications via email and chat, and many of them disrupt focus.

What Might Distract Us

• 56.1% of daily activities are email and Teams chat.

Professionals are pulled into email +110 times each weekday—or about once every 5 minutes.

46% of time spent in meetings is spent multitasking.

Professionals get—at most—15-minute bursts of uninterrupted focus during business hours.

The Implication

With only 15 minutes of focus time between interruptions, sustained concentration is nearly impossible. This leaves professionals in a state of partial focus during business hours.

The Scale of Meetings

Professionals spend 16.6 hours weekly in meetings, and multitask through nearly half of them.

Those 16.6 hours translate to 30.2% of all work time.

50% of all meetings are client-facing.

1/3 of all meetings have 9+ attendees, while studies show that fewer than 8 people is most productive.

The Implication

We're meeting frequently, multitasking throughout, and possibly including the wrong people.

"By identifying the exact points of organizational friction using Laurel's data, we automated our lowest-leverage tasks, instantly giving our team members 10% more time for client service."

• Firm Leader Name, Client Operations

From Visibility to Optimization

The Dawn of Time Intelligence

With an AI Time platform, you can get valuable visibility into organizational time, and shift from managing activities to optimizing outcomes.

Download the full report and dig deeper.