Time After Time

As if there aren’t enough surveys to write about, there’s a new survey that shows how people spend their time — other than on conducting surveys and writing about them.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently issued its “American Time Use Survey” for 2011.

This survey reports the average amount of time per day in 2011 individuals spent in various activities, like working, household duties, childcare and leisure. It also focuses on eldercare. Evidently, 16 percent of the U.S. civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and over were eldercare providers.

Of the 39.8 million eldercare providers, 56 percent were women, and most were between ages of 45 and 64, according to the survey, which states that on the days those people provided eldercare they spent an average of 3.1 hours doing so.

The BLS survey also focuses on working. Employed persons spent an average of 7.6 hours a day working, however men worked 47 minutes more than women. According to the report, this difference partly reflects a woman’s greater likelihood of working part time — although full-time working men worked longer than women full timers (8.3 hours compared with 7.8 hours).

About one in five employed persons did some or all of their work at home, and 85 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace, the survey shows. Self-employed workers were three times more likely than wage and salary workers to have done some work at home — 56 percent versus 18 percent.

Of course there’s always time for some leisure.

On an average day, nearly everyone age 15 and over engaged in some sort of leisure, such as watching TV, socializing or exercising. Of those who engaged in leisure activities, men spent more time (5.8 hours) than did women (5.2 hours).

And here’s some good news for television makers and sellers: Watching TV occupied most of the leisure time, consuming 2.8 hours per day.

Socializing was the next most common leisure activity, taking up about 45 minutes per day.

But the sad part to all of this is that if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re old.

People age 75 and up averaged 73 minutes reading on weekdays. The amount of time spent reading falls as you get younger. People who have just reached retirement age spend a little under an hour reading, while those age 55 to 64 spend about a half-hour. For the under 35 set it drops to about 15 minutes a day.