Personal Web surfing boosts productivity, and unemployment hits 8.5%

GOOD DAY FOR: Mixing business and leisure, after an Australian study found that employees who surf the Internet for personal reasons on company time are about 9 percent more productive than those who don’t. The study looked only at workers who check email or Facebook, watch YouTube, read the news, or do other non-work surfing for less that 20 percent of their workday. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration,” said University of Melbourne researcher Brent Coker, who conducted the study. (Reuters, in Wired)

BAD DAY FOR: Switching jobs, after the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent, its highest level since 1983, according to new Labor Department figures. The U.S. economy shed 663,000 jobs in March, the government said, and those with jobs worked fewer hours: a record low of 33.2 hours a week on average, from 33.3 hours. About 5.1 million people have lost their jobs in the current recession. (Bloomberg)

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