Poll: Just 22% of American e-mail users have no unread messages in their inbox

The latest research from YouGov shows that the vast majority of Americans (79%) try to keep on top of their unread e-mails with only 18% of Americans admitting that they don’t try to keep the number of unread emails as close to zero as possible. 

Respondents were asked to say how many unread emails they had in their inbox at the time they answered the survey. The average adult American has 500 unread emails, though the ‘median’ (meaning that half of Americans have more unread e-mails while half have fewer) is only 5.

22% of Americans say that they have no unread emails in their inbox currently, while 26% have less than ten unread emails. 27% have between 10 and 49, while 19% have between 50 and 999 unread e-mails. Only 6% say that their unread email total tops 1,000. There is little difference between different groups when it comes to how many unread emails they have, though men (22%) are somewhat more likely than women (15%) to have no unread emails. Also, 29% of people with incomes over $80,000 a year report having no unread emails.