Contrary to popular belief, the majority of American office workers aren't overwhelmed with unsolicited "spam" e-mail, and most consider e-mail very valuable in helping them do their jobs, a new study shows. More than 60 percent of people employed in the U.S. have Internet access at work and virtually all of those use e-mail on the job. . .
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of American office workers aren't overwhelmed with unsolicited "spam" e-mail, and most consider e-mail very valuable in helping them do their jobs, a new study shows. More than 60 percent of people employed in the U.S. have Internet access at work and virtually all of those use e-mail on the job. That translates into 57 million wired American workers, more than double the amount of people with Internet access on the job just 2 years ago, according to research expected to be released Monday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Almost all workers with e-mail check their in-boxes at least once a day (88 percent), with most (70 percent) checking it several times a day.

For those Americans, e-mail is considered a vital part of their daily work lives, with 63 percent of them finding e-mail communications more effective than using the phone or talking in person when making arrangements and appointments. The vast majority (86 percent) believe that e-mail saves time and 59 percent say it improves teamwork.

In fact, the use of e-mail on the job has become so pervasive in American office life that half of the participants in the Pew study believe it to be essential to their work.

At the same time, there's a widespread perception that many American workers are wasting too much time every day dealing with the rising flood of unwanted e-mail pitches, or spam.

What the Pew researchers found in a survey of 2,447 Americans is that the average wired American worker spends only about a half-hour dealing with e-mail on a typical day. About a fifth of workers deal with a lot of e-mail all the time, but on average people on the job receive 10 or fewer e-mails a day and send five or less.

"We were expecting that people at work would be complaining that they were buried in e-mail," said Deb Fallows, the Project's senior research fellow. "But people use e-mail responsibly and in moderation and they like it."

No doubt spam is an annoyance for American businesses, but the Pew study should help dispel any remaining doubts that e-mail is a valuable tool in the American workplace.

The study also acknowledges the growing volume of spam and its impact on corporate e-mail systems. Industry watchers estimate that about a third of the over 7.3 billion e-mails sent every day are unwanted commercial pitches. According to a recent study by Jupiter Research, the average amount of spam received per user each day has nearly doubled, to 6.2 from 3.7 e-mails per day.

Overall the junk e-mail situation has gotten so bad that even the world's leading group of direct marketers has called for government regulation.

"Based on the sheer volume [of spam], even legitimate e-mails from companies are being lost," Jerry Cerasale, the Direct Marketing Association's senior vice president of government affairs told MSNBC.com last month.

So while some home-based e-mail accounts are deluged with staggering amounts of spam, most unsolicited commercial messages don't reach e-mail accounts at people's work places, the study found. Only about 15 percent of workers report dealing with more than 50 e-mails a day.

Companies and businesses have been confronted the junk mail problem with spam-fighters and filters that block the messages before they reach workers' in-boxes.

Fallows call corporate technology staffers the "unsung heroes" who block spam from company e-mail systems with filtering software.

"Spam is out there but it's only arriving at certain places. A lot is being kicked out by technology," she said.

Spam aside, Americans aren't all happy about the proliferation of e-mail in the office. About a quarter of wired workers find e-mail distracting and a fifth say it has both caused misunderstandings and added stress to their jobs.

In the end, however "people use it smartly and efficiently and can't live without it," said Fallows.

The link for this article located at MSNBC is no longer available.