Yesterday was Labor Day in the U.S., and that got me thinking about just how much harder it is to get through a working day now than before I lost much of my hearing. To quantify the problem, I went back to a study released earlier this year by the Better Hearing Institute, which found that Americans with untreated hearing loss earned less income than people with normal hearing to the tune of $23,000 a year, on average, or over $100 billion a year nationwide.
“Even people with mild hearing loss, who may miss a consonant or a word here and there, will lose income if they can’t completely grasp the latest news at the water cooler or the subtle nuances in a phone message from the boss,” said Dr. Sergei Kochkin, Executive Director of the Better Hearing Institute and author of the report. The good news is that people who get hearing aids can recover up to 50 percent of that lost income, according to the study.
“Some incorrectly believe a hearing aid will make them seem odd or out of place or less able to do the job than their co-workers. But if you seem out of touch or just plain stupid because you can’t hear very well, that will be much more noticeable than a modern hearing device in your ear,” Kochkin says. BHI has done other groundbreaking studies on the impact of hearing loss on society and on how consumers adapt to hearing assistance solutions that are available to them.