Communication Statistics (2026): 56 Sourced Figures

This page collects figures on how people and businesses communicate: email and chat volume at work, meetings and video calls, time spent communicating, phone ownership, messaging apps and unwanted calls. Every number links to the document that first published it. Government and regulator figures come from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Eurostat, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UK communications regulator Ofcom and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Survey figures come from Pew Research Center. Workplace volume figures come from Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, which is vendor telemetry from Microsoft 365 and is labeled as such. Company figures come from Zoom’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For a comparison of the meeting tools behind many of these numbers, see the StatWharf comparison of video conferencing software.

Key figures at a glance

Email and chat volume at work (Microsoft Work Trend Index)

Microsoft published “Breaking down the infinite workday” on June 17, 2025, as part of its Work Trend Index. The figures are aggregated, anonymized Microsoft 365 usage signals, so they describe workers who use Microsoft’s tools, not all workers. Microsoft sells the products measured.

• The average worker receives 117 emails a day, most of them skimmed in under 60 seconds, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• The average worker receives 153 Teams messages per weekday, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Teams messages per person rose 6% year over year globally, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Mass emails with 20 or more recipients rose 7% over the past year, while one-on-one threads fell 5%, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Employees are interrupted by a meeting, email or notification every two minutes during core work hours, or 275 times a day, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• 40% of people online at 6 a.m. are reviewing email for the day’s priorities, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• By 10 p.m., 29% of active workers are back in their inboxes, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• The average employee sends or receives more than 50 messages outside core business hours, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Chats sent outside the standard 9-to-5 workday rose 15% year over year, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• 48% of employees and 52% of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).

Meetings and video calls

The meeting figures below come from the same Microsoft Work Trend Index release. Microsoft’s own methodology note gives slightly different values for two of them (60% ad hoc meetings and 30% of meetings across time zones). The main-text values are used here.

• 57% of meetings are ad hoc calls without a calendar invite, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Half of all meetings take place between 9 and 11 a.m. and between 1 and 3 p.m., per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Tuesdays carry the heaviest meeting load at 23% of meetings, while Fridays carry 16%, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Meetings after 8 p.m. rose 16% year over year, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).
• Nearly a third of meetings span multiple time zones, up 35% since 2021, per Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2025).

Peer-reviewed research on remote communication

• A study of the emails, calendars, instant messages, video and audio calls of 61,182 US Microsoft employees found that firm-wide remote work made collaboration networks more static and siloed and shifted communication from synchronous to asynchronous, per Nature Human Behaviour (2021).
• A survey of 9,787 participants found that more frequent and longer video calls, fewer breaks and “mirror anxiety” were associated with more Zoom fatigue, and that women reported greater fatigue than men, per Computers in Human Behavior Reports (2023).

A laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries, published in Nature in April 2022, found that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas compared with in-person groups, but found no evidence that it makes groups worse at selecting which idea to pursue. The abstract does not state effect sizes, so no figure from it is counted here.

Time spent communicating (BLS American Time Use Survey)

The BLS released 2025 results of the American Time Use Survey on June 25, 2026. The survey covers the US civilian population aged 15 and over. “Telephone calls, mail, and e-mail” counts personal communication as a primary activity. Work email done while working is counted as work.

• 19.2% of Americans spent time on telephone calls, mail or email on an average day in 2025, per the BLS (2026).
• Americans averaged 0.19 hours (about 11 minutes) a day on telephone calls, mail and email in 2025, per the BLS (2026).
• 23.2% of women and 15.0% of men spent time on telephone calls, mail or email on an average day in 2025, per the BLS (2026).
• 30% of Americans engaged in socializing and communicating on an average day in 2025, down from 38% in 2015, per the BLS (2026).
• Time spent socializing and communicating fell from 41 minutes a day in 2015 to 35 minutes in 2025, per the BLS (2026).
• 35% of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2025, per the BLS (2026).

Phone ownership

United States (Pew Research Center)

Pew Research Center updated its mobile fact sheet on October 19, 2026, from its National Public Opinion Reference Survey of 5,511 US adults, fielded January 30 to June 18, 2026.

• 98% of US adults own a cellphone of some kind, per Pew Research Center (2026).
• 91% of US adults own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011, per Pew Research Center (2026).
• 16% of US adults are “smartphone-only” internet users with no home broadband, per Pew Research Center (2026).
• 79% of US adults aged 65 and over own a smartphone, compared with 97% of those aged 18 to 49, per Pew Research Center (2026).
• 80% of US adults in households earning under $30,000 own a smartphone, compared with 98% in households earning $100,000 or more, per Pew Research Center (2026).

Worldwide (ITU)

The ITU published its Facts and Figures 2025 section on mobile phone ownership on October 15, 2025. It counts individuals aged 10 and over.

• 82% of people aged 10 and over own a mobile phone worldwide, per the ITU (2025).
• 78% of females and 87% of males aged 10 and over own a mobile phone, per the ITU (2025).
• Women are 10% less likely than men to own a mobile phone, down from 12% in 2022, per the ITU (2025).
• Only 53% of people aged 10 and over in low-income economies own a mobile phone, per the ITU (2025).
• Mobile phone ownership exceeds 95% in high-income economies, per the ITU (2025).
• In Africa, 66% of the population own a mobile phone but only 36% are online, per the ITU (2025).

Email, messaging and calls online

European Union (Eurostat)

Eurostat’s digital economy and society statistics cover individuals aged 16 to 74. The 2025 data were extracted in December 2025.

• 82% of people aged 16–74 in the EU sent or received email in 2025, per Eurostat (2025).
• 82% of people aged 16–74 in the EU used instant messaging in 2025, per Eurostat (2025).
• 76% of people aged 16–74 in the EU made telephone or video calls over the internet in 2025, per Eurostat (2025).

United Kingdom (Ofcom)

Ofcom published Online Nation 2025 on December 10, 2025. Its messaging and calling figures come from Ipsos iris online audience measurement of UK internet users aged 18 and over in May 2025. Ofcom notes that Microsoft Teams is under-counted because desktop app use is not measured.

• 90% of UK online adults used WhatsApp in May 2025, up from 87% in 2024, per Ofcom (2025).
• 74% of UK online adults used WhatsApp each day in May 2025, up from 64% in May 2024, per Ofcom (2025).
• WhatsApp users in the UK spent an average of 17 hours 28 minutes on the service in May 2025, per Ofcom (2025).
• Facebook Messenger reached 58% of UK online adults in May 2025, but its visitors fell by 7% (2.1 million) year on year, per Ofcom (2025).
• Google Messages reached 42% of UK online adults in May 2025 after adding 7.7 million visitors (+61%) in a year, per Ofcom (2025).
• Gmail reached 58% of UK online adults in 2025, up from 55% in 2024 and 51% in 2023, per Ofcom (2025).
• 67% of UK adults who visited Telegram in May 2025 were men, per Ofcom (2025).

Video meeting market (Zoom SEC filing)

Zoom Communications filed its fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results with the SEC on February 25, 2026. Zoom’s fiscal year 2026 ended January 31, 2026.

• Zoom reported fiscal 2026 revenue of $4,868.8 million, up 4.4% year over year, per Zoom’s SEC filing (2026).
• Zoom had 4,468 customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenue, up about 9.3% year over year, per Zoom’s SEC filing (2026).
• Zoom’s online average monthly churn was 2.9% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, compared with 2.8% a year earlier, per Zoom’s SEC filing (2026).
• Zoom’s trailing 12-month net dollar expansion rate for Enterprise customers was 98%, per Zoom’s SEC filing (2026).

Unwanted calls (FTC Do Not Call Registry)

The FTC released its Do Not Call Registry Data Book for fiscal year 2025 on December 11, 2025. The fiscal year ended September 30, 2025.

• The National Do Not Call Registry held about 258.5 million active registrations on September 30, 2025, per the FTC (2025).
• More than 4.7 million numbers were added to the registry in fiscal year 2025, per the FTC (2025).
• Unwanted call complaints were about 48% lower than in fiscal year 2021, when there were about five million reports, per the FTC (2025).
• Arizona had the most Do Not Call complaints per capita in fiscal year 2025, at 1,028 per 100,000 people, per the FTC (2025).

Method

• Data window. Figures date from 2021 to October 2026. The page prefers the latest release of each series.
• Primary sources only. Each figure links to the body that first published it: the BLS, Pew Research Center, the ITU, Eurostat, Ofcom, the FTC, Zoom’s SEC filing, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index and peer-reviewed articles in Nature Human Behaviour and Computers in Human Behavior Reports. Statistics aggregators, roundups and vendor blogs that re-quote figures were not used.
• Vendor data is labeled. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index figures are telemetry from Microsoft 365 users, published by the company that sells the products measured. Zoom’s figures are company-reported financial results.
• Checks. StatWharf Editorial opened each source in November 2026 and checked that the figure and its date appear there. PubMed blocks automated requests, so the two PubMed-linked abstracts were read through Europe PMC records for the same PubMed IDs. The Ofcom figures were read from the report PDF. Figures without a reachable primary source were left out. These include CTIA’s 2026 Annual Survey counts of US text messages and voice minutes, whose page did not render readable text, and the FTC’s exact fiscal 2025 complaint total, whose Data Book PDF returned an access error. Radicati’s widely repeated daily email volume estimates were left out because the Radicati site did not resolve. Grammarly and Harris Poll’s estimate that poor communication costs US businesses $1.2 trillion a year dates from a 2021 survey and was not used. Microsoft Teams monthly active user counts for 2026 were left out because no Microsoft primary source for a current figure was found. The 320 million figure dates from 2023.
• No modeling. The page reports published figures only. No value is estimated by StatWharf.
• Measures differ. Microsoft measures Microsoft 365 users. The BLS measures personal communication time across the US population. Ofcom measures audience reach among UK internet users. Comparisons are valid within one source, not across sources.
• Overlap. Remote and hybrid work figures are on the remote work statistics page. Contact center and customer service figures are on the customer service statistics page. Email campaign benchmarks are on the email marketing statistics page. They are not repeated here.

Using these figures

Workplace communication volume keeps rising in Microsoft’s telemetry: 117 emails and 153 Teams messages a day, with interruptions every two minutes and more chat after hours. More than half of meetings are unscheduled calls. Outside work, Americans spend about 11 minutes a day on calls, mail and email, and time spent socializing and communicating has fallen since 2015. Phone ownership is near universal in the United States and in high-income countries, but only about half of people in low-income economies own one. In the EU, email and instant messaging are used by the same 82% share of adults, and in the UK WhatsApp reaches nine in ten online adults. Buyers choosing a meeting tool can compare the main options in the StatWharf comparison of video conferencing software, and teams trying to cut meeting load can see the StatWharf comparison of meeting management software. Other StatWharf data pages are listed in the research directory. Send corrections to any figure to the editorial address below.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.