Despite the lack of evidence, the global market for employee-monitoring technology is expected to exceed $4 billion in 2026, largely due to major companies in North America. A New York Times investigation in 2022 found that eight out of the 10 largest private US employers, including United Parcel Service, Amazon and UnitedHealth Group, tracked productivity metrics of individual workers, often in real time.
US postal workers are also closely watched. Delivering mail “feels less like public service and more like working inside a quiet surveillance state,” said a Reddit user in 2025. “We’re tracked down to the second. Every scan. Every step. Every stop. They monitor our GPS in real time. They can pull up on us unannounced. We get questioned for things as human as needing the restroom or checking a package twice.”
Any employer of any size can get into the monitoring business. Amazon Web Services sells thousands and thousands of software programs for employee monitoring, says Michele Molè, an employment law researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Adding a monitoring app to the workplace can be as easy as downloading Spotify, he says. But instead of music, employers get a stream of data about how each employee is behaving every minute of their day.
If someone has enough time to watch others, what are they doing to earn their salary? Watching someone is not a job.
Time capsule…
20 years ago…”manager” watches when people get to work and writes it down on a calendar (she even does this with her manager). This manager really has it in for one person, but she wants to give the appearance of being fair. She comes up with the idea of EAS employees, who report to her, having a time sheet for logging BT/OL/IL/ET. Mind you, when she is asked if all other departments are having to do this, she says no. Someone requests the HR Manager come to her office because this appears to be disparate treatment (she does not care for the HR Manager). She gets flustered and rips up the time sheet she had made and says the meeting is over.
Stand up and do not be run over.
Karma came back around, though, in the 2011 redesign and RIF.
Very true. There are just too many managers with unnecessary tasks., and this is one of many. This also highlights the fact that , yes, some employees are monitored because radicals in labor have pushed through individuals ill suited morally and mentally for the job. They have no work ethic, and the pay is so low compared with the requirements of the job that they have no business in the USPS. Their managers are kindred spirits, so here we are. The good employees at the USPS always pay the price for the bad behaviors of others.