The Cost of Business Downtime, By Industry

The cost of business downtime ranges from roughly $36,000 an hour in fast-moving consumer goods to more than $2 million an hour in automotive manufacturing, government, and financial services. Across the Global 2000, unplanned downtime costs an estimated $400 billion a year, equivalent to roughly 9% of profits.

Most downtime conversations default to cybersecurity; ransomware and data breaches make headlines, and the costs are well documented. But cyber incidents account for roughly a third of unplanned downtime. The rest comes from network failures, application and infrastructure breakdowns, power outages, equipment failure, and severe weather. If your business continuity plan only accounts for cyberattacks, you’re planning for one third of the problem.

Here’s what downtime actually costs, industry by industry, and why the number varies so much.

Why the cost of an hour varies so widely

Downtime cost isn’t just about lost revenue. It reflects how tightly a business depends on continuous operation, how exposed it is to contractual penalties, and how quickly it can recover once something breaks.

An automotive assembly line loses money by the second because every idle minute represents unbuilt cars, idle labor, and missed delivery windows down a tightly coupled supply chain. A retailer’s website loses money the moment checkout stops working. A hospital’s cost isn’t just financial: delayed care and compliance exposure compound the dollar figure fast. Government agencies face longer outages on average than almost any other sector, plus the added weight of public accountability.

Downtime costs by industry

Automotive manufacturing

Automotive manufacturing downtime is among the most expensive of any sector. Large plants lose an average of $2.3 million per hour of downtime, more than $600 a second, and the cost has risen 113% over the past five years.

Heavy industry

Per-hour costs have climbed 319% since 2019, driven largely by rising energy prices. A representative large plant loses about $59 million a year to unplanned downtime. Additionally, an industrial sector cyberbreach costs an average of $5 million.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)

The exception to the trend. Costs run as low as $36,000 an hour and have stayed relatively stable, though annual losses per plant have still doubled since 2019 to just over $10 million, reflecting more frequent, lower-cost incidents rather than catastrophic ones.

Oil & gas

Downtime costs track the price of oil directly. Costs spiked to record highs in 2018 when oil neared $150 a barrel ($224 when adjusted for 2026).

Healthcare

Hospital downtime runs an estimated $5,300 to $9,000 per minute, or roughly $318,000 to $540,000 an hour, once delayed care, cancelled procedures, and staff redeployment are factored in. A healthcare breach costs, on average, $7.4 million, the highest of any industry for the 12^th consecutive year. Beyond the dollar figure, healthcare carries compliance exposure that other industries don’t: regulatory citations and potential suspension of federal funding are real risks after extended outages.

Retail

Retail carries the highest average annual downtime cost among Global 2000 companies, at roughly $287 million a year, driven by lost sales during peak periods and the immediacy of e-commerce revenue loss. A single hour of Amazon’s site being down has been estimated to cost the company $34 million in sales.

Telecommunications

Telecommunications downtime costs roughly $2 million an hour, reflecting both the scale of customer impact and the cascading effect on every other business and service that depends on connectivity.

Energy

Downtime for the energy industry is around $2.48 million an hour, among the highest of any sector, tied closely to the criticality of continuous power generation and distribution.

Financial services and insurance

The financial services and insurance industries are among the most exposed to prolonged downtime. This sector reports the second-highest median annual downtime of any industry, at 528 hours a year (about 22 days), and hourly costs for high-impact outages run around $2.2 million. A financial services breach costs an average $5.56 million.

Government and public sector

Government agencies report the highest hourly cost among all sectors for high-impact outages, at $2.3 million, and the longest average time to resolve an outage, at 302 hours. Public sector organizations report average annual downtime damage-control costs of $73 million, more than four times the figure for financial services. Network failure and security failure are tied as the leading causes.

Logistics and warehouse/distribution

Cloud and system outages can cost warehouse operators as much as $100,000 an hour, and a recent industry survey found 84% of logistics operators had experienced at least one significant disruption in the past two years. Downtime here cascades quickly: a missing part can idle an automotive assembly line at a cost of up to $22,000 a minute, and a fleet of 500 trucks running just 1% downtime a day can lose more than $2 million a year.

Small and mid-sized manufacturers

Even without the scale of a Fortune 500 plant, SME downtime can reach $150,000 an hour at the top end, a figure that can be unsustainable for a smaller organization’s cash flow.

Is downtime mainly caused by cyberattacks?

Recent research on unplanned outages found that only 32% of downtime incidents were cybersecurity driven. The rest broke down as 43% network or IT environment issues and 24% application or infrastructure failures. Power outages, severe weather, and equipment failure sit outside that breakdown entirely but remain some of the most common triggers reported across industries.

That distribution matters for how you plan. A disaster recovery and business continuity plan built solely around ransomware response leaves gaps for the outage types that are more common: a failed router, a bad software deployment, a regional power event, an aging piece of equipment nobody flagged for replacement.

What hidden costs does downtime create beyond the hourly figure?

The per-hour figures above capture lost revenue and idle labor, but they miss several costs that compound over time:

• Recovery takes longer than it used to. Average recovery time from a downtime incident has grown from 49 minutes five years ago to 81 minutes today, driven by skilled labor shortages and slower parts availability. Cyber-specific incidents follow a similar pattern: The average data breach now takes 241 days to identify and contain, and breaches that stretch past 200 days cost organizations $5.01 million on average, compared to $3.87 million for those resolved faster.
• Contractual penalties stack up. Missed delivery windows trigger late-delivery clauses that commonly run 0.5% to 1% of order value per week, with caps as high as 10% of total contract value.
• Regulatory exposure follows extended outages. Healthcare and government face compliance scrutiny that private-sector companies in less regulated industries don’t.
• Reputational damage outlasts the outage. Roughly 40% of outages cause lasting damage to brand trust and customer confidence, a cost that doesn’t show up in any single hour’s tally.

What does this mean for your business continuity plan?

The wide range in these figures, from $36,000 an hour in FMCG to more than $2 million an hour in government and financial services, makes one thing clear: a generic downtime estimate won’t tell you much. What matters is calculating your own disaster recovery exposure, based on your revenue per hour, your contractual obligations, and the realistic causes of downtime in your industry, not just the ones that make headlines.