GTA 6 New Mexico worker absences and lost wages estimate, Digi Mart USA News: GTA 6 launches Thursday, November 19, and a study has put a price on a day off in New Mexico: more than 5,700 workers absent above their usual rate and roughly $1.38 million in wages, counted as the value of work that would not be done that day. The estimate comes from Amazon Slots, a British online casino site unrelated to the Amazon retailer, which released state-by-state figures two weeks before the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Across the full study, the United States would see 989,329 extra absent employees above typical absence rates and $301.5 million in lost wage value on the single launch day. Texas leads with more than 96,000 workers and $29.4 million, while Florida shows 61,347 absences and $17.5 million.
New Mexico is far smaller than those states, but its figures show the logic of the calculation.
The $1.38 million is not money that New Mexico workers lose from their own pockets. Employees with accumulated days off will still be paid even if they spend Thursday at home.
What the study calls lost wages is the wage value of work that would not be performed that day, a snapshot of stopped production expressed in payroll dollars.
On method, the study did not rely on surveys of offices in Albuquerque or Las Cruces. Amazon Slots took the absences each state could record on November 19 above its typical absence rate and multiplied them by that state’s daily wage value.
In New Mexico this works out to about $242 per absent worker, compared with about $305 nationally, because state wages sit below the national average. The study circulates with only a brief description of its method and no technical document supporting it step by step, so its figures should be read with caution: they are the estimate of a betting site with an interest in the number spreading.
That the model is marketing does not make the Thursday a normal day. BambooHR, a human resources platform with leave data from more than 3.4 million employees in the United States, found that time-off requests for Thursday, November 19 run between 9% and 17% above those for a typical third Thursday in November, and 13% in another reading of its data.
These requests have already been filed: they are not stated intentions in a poll but absences recorded in company systems.
Online, a much larger figure also circulates: 1.5 million workers and $1,000 million. That number does not come from Amazon Slots.
It stems from an estimate by economist José García Montalvo of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, shared in a 2025 Spanish radio interview with no published study behind it. Reviewers of the calculation noted that, using the economist’s own assumptions, the result is closer to $400 million than $1,000 million, and that part of the time off that day simply shifts within each employee’s annual calendar.
The survey that does exist was released in October by GameSquare and Pollfish among 1,000 full-time employees who play games: 10% plan to miss work on launch day, another 30% are considering it, 36% of those inclined to skip work might report themselves sick, and 42% expect to be less productive even if they show up. Take-Two chief executive Strauss Zelnick joked in April that many people would call in sick on November 19.
The size of the launch helps explain the noise. The analytics firm Newzoo estimates the game could sell at least 37 million copies in its first week, with global retail sales of up to $4.5 billion over those seven days.
A launch of this scale is measured not only in stores but also in offices that run at half capacity.
GTA VI is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, priced at $79.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate edition, and players who reserved it can get it ready in advance: pre-loading begins November 10. Thirteen years after GTA V, the launch is an event, and the announced mass absence has something of a collective ritual about it.
Amazon Slots’ estimate for New Mexico, with its 5,700 absences and $1.38 million in wage value, is a showcase calculation: it works as a gauge of the buzz, not as accounting. The more serious gauge is the time-off requests already filed on human resources platforms, which are rising double digits for that Thursday.
If people are missing from your office on the 19th, you already know where to look first.
