Poll finds average person works 7.6 hours per day

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported June 3 that in 2006:

Employed persons worked 7.6 hours on average on the days that they worked. They worked more hours on weekdays than on weekend days – 8.0 vs. 5.4 hours.

·        On the days that they worked, employed men worked about an hour more than employed women – 8.0 vs. 7.1 hours.

·        On the days that they worked, 21 percent of employed persons did some or all of their work at home and 86 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace.

·        On an average day (which includes weekends), persons ages 15 to 19 spent 3.3 hours engaged in educational activities, more than quadruple the amount of time spent by individuals in any other age group.

BLS has long produced statistics about the labor market, such as employment, hours of work, and earnings. To provide a more complete picture of the context of employment, BLS also conducts the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The ATUS collects data on what activities people do during the day and how much time they spend doing them.

This fourth annual release of ATUS data focuses on the time that Americans worked, did household activities, cared for household children, participated in educational activities, and engaged in leisure and sports activities in 2006. This report includes new measures of time use for younger and older Americans. It also includes measures of the average time per day spent providing childcare – both as a primary activity and while doing other things – for the combined years 2003-2006.

Data collection for the ATUS began in January 2003. The survey is sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. ATUS estimates for 2006 are based on interviews of about 13,000 individuals. Respondents were interviewed only once and reported their activities for the 24-hour period from 4 a.m. on the day before the interview until 4 a.m. on the day of the interview. If respondents reported doing more than one activity at a time, they were asked to identify which activity was primary. Except for secondary childcare, activities done simultaneously with primary activities were not collected. Activities were then grouped into categories for analysis.

The "Average Day"

"Average day" measures for the entire population provide a mechanism for seeing the overall distribution of time allocation for society as a whole.

The ATUS collects data about daily activities from all segments of the population age 15 and over, including persons who are employed, unemployed or not in the labor force (such as students or retirees). Data is collected for weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Thus, "average day" measures reflect the average distribution of time across all persons and days. Activity profiles differ based upon age, employment status, gender and other characteristics. On an "average day" in 2006, persons in the U.S. age 15 and over slept about 8.6 hours, spent 5.1 hours doing leisure and sports activities, worked for 3.8 hours, and spent 1.8 hours doing household activities. The remaining 4.7 hours were spent doing a variety of other activities, including

eating and drinking, attending school, and shopping. By comparison, an average weekday for persons employed full time and who worked on that day included 9.3 hours working, 7.6 hours sleeping, 3.0 hours doing leisure and sports activities, and 0.9 hour doing household activities. The remaining 3.2 hours were spent in other activities, such as those described above. (These estimates include related travel time.)

Many activities typically are not done on a daily basis, and some activities only are done by a subset of the population. For example, only 45 percent of all persons age 15 years and over worked on an average day in 2006 because most employed persons did not work every day and some were not employed. For this reason, much of the analysis that follows uses time-use estimates that are restricted to specific population groups, such as employed persons, or adults in households with children.

Working (by Employed Persons) in 2006

·        Employed persons worked 7.6 hours on average on the days that they worked. They worked longer on weekdays than on weekend days – 8.0 vs. 5.4 hours.

·        On the days that they worked, employed men worked about an hour 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 slightly longer than women – 8.4 vs. 7.7 hours.

·        Many more people worked on weekdays than on weekend days: 84 percent of employed persons worked on an average weekday, compared with 35 percent on an average weekend day.

·        On the days that they worked, 21 percent of employed persons did some or all of their work at home and 86 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace. Hours worked at home averaged 2.6 hours per day while hours worked at a workplace averaged 7.9 hours per day. Men and women were about equally likely to do some or all of their work at home.

·        Multiple jobholders were about twice as likely to work on an average weekend day as were single jobholders – 59 vs. 32 percent. Multiple jobholders also were much more likely to work at home than were single jobholders – 39 vs. 19 percent.

·        Self-employed workers were more likely to work on an average weekend day (49 percent) than were wage and salary workers (31 percent). Self-employed workers also were more likely than wage and salary workers to have done some work at home – 56 vs. 17 percent.

Read the full report and view all of the data tables by clicking on the link below:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.htm