American Time Use Survey.

The Bureau of Labor & Statistics (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 2003-06.

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 are 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 5.1 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 versus 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 versus 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 versus 32 percent. Multiple jobholders also were much more likely to work at home than were single jobholders–39 versus 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 versus 17 percent.

Household Activities in 2006

–On an average day, 84 percent of women and 64 percent of men spent some time doing household activities, such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management.

–On the days that they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.7 hours on such activities while men spent 2.1 hours.

–On an average day, 20 percent of men did housework–such as cleaning or doing laundry–compared with 52 percent of women. Thirty-seven percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 65 percent of women.

Educational Activities in 2006

–About 9 percent of the population engaged in educational activities on an average day. Those who attended class spent an average of 4.5 hours doing so, and those who did homework and research spent 2.4 hours in such activities.

–More people did homework on weekdays than on weekend days–6.9 percent versus 4.0 percent. However, persons who did homework spent about the same amount of time doing it on weekdays (2.4 hours) and weekend days (2.5 hours).

–On an average day, persons ages 15 to 19 spent 3.3 hours engaged in educational activities, more than four times as long as individuals in any other age group.

Leisure Activities in 2006

–On an average day, nearly everyone age 15 and over (96 percent) engaged in some sort of leisure activity, such as watching TV, socializing, or exercising. Of those who engaged in leisure
activities, men spent more time in these activities (5.7 hours) than did women (4.9 hours).

–Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time, on average, for both men and women. Socializing, such as visiting with friends or attending or hosting social events, was the next most common leisure activity, accounting for about three-quarters of an hour per day for both sexes.

–Men were more likely than women to participate in sports, exercise, or recreation on any given day, 20 versus 15 percent. On the days that they participated, men also spent more time in these activities than women, 2.0 versus 1.2 hours, respectively.

–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 1.4 hours of reading per weekend day and 0.2 hour (12 minutes) playing games or using a computer for leisure. Conversely, individuals ages 15 to 19 read for an average of 0.1 hour (7 minutes) per weekend day and spent 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure.

Care of Household Children (by Adults in Households with Children) for the period 2003-06

–Adults living in households with children under 6 spent 2.0 hours providing primary childcare (such as providing physical care or reading to children) to household children. Adults living in households where the youngest child was between the ages of 6 and 17 spent less than half as much time providing primary childcare to household children–0.8 hour (47 minutes).

–On weekdays, among adults living in households with children under 6, women spent 1.2 hours providing physical childcare (such as bathing or feeding a child) to household children; by contrast, men spent 0.4 hours (25 minutes). On weekends, women provided about an hour per day of physical childcare, while men provided about 30 minutes.

–Adults living in households with children under 6 spent an average of 5.6 hours per day providing secondary childcare–that is, they had at least one child under age 13 in their care while doing other things. Secondary childcare was most commonly performed while doing leisure activities (2.2 hours) or household activities (1.4 hours).

–Adults living in households with children under 6 spent more time providing primary childcare on weekdays (2.1 hours) than on weekend days (1.7 hours). However, they spent less time providing secondary childcare on weekdays than weekend days–4.8 hours versus 7.5 hours.

For more information at http://www.bls.gov/>