The Bureau of Labor Statistics today
released its annual "Time Use Survey" Thursday. This covers employment, housework, child care and leisure time. It also includes things such as volunteer activities and ... sleep. Age and gender categories provide a window on our differences. Although certain aspects of any self-reporting survey must always be considered with a grain of salt—for example, how much time men spend doing housework—the trends nonetheless provide some interesting data. Here are some highlights from the report:
• On the days they worked, employed men worked 55 minutes more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women’s greater likelihood of working part time. However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked longer than women—8.5 hours compared with 7.9 hours. [...]
• On the days they worked, 85 percent of employed persons did some or all of their work at their workplace and 23 percent did some or all of their work at home. They spent more time working at the workplace than at home—7.9 hours compared with 3.0 hours. [...]
• On an average day, 20 percent of men did housework—such as cleaning or doing laundry—compared with 48 percent of women. Thirty-nine percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 65 percent of women. [...]
• Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.8 hours per day),
accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for those age 15 and over. Socializing, such as visiting with friends or attending or hosting social events, was the next most common leisure activity, accounting for nearly three-quarters of an hour per day.
• Time spent reading for personal interest and playing games or using a computer for leisure varied greatly by age. Individuals age 75 and over averaged 1.0 hour of reading per weekend day and 20 minutes playing games or using a computer for leisure. Conversely, individuals ages 15 to 19 read for an average of 7 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure. [...]
• On an average day, among adults living in households with children under age 6, women spent 1.1 hours providing physical care (such as bathing or feeding a child) to household children; by contrast, men spent 26 minutes providing physical care.
The release contains numerous tables and
data files by which people can create their own tabulations and analyses. All markers and that might identify individuals have been removed from these files.