American Time Use Survey Summary

Technical information:  (202) 691-6339     USDL 07-0930
               http://www.bls.gov/tus/
                                           For release: 10:00 A.M. EDT
Media contact:                691-5902     Thursday, June 28, 2007

                 
     (NOTE:  This release was reissued on Thursday, July 19, 2007, 
     to correct the phrase in the first paragraph of "The Average 
     Day" section that originally read "remaining 5.1 hours" to 
     read "remaining 4.7 hours."  This correction did not affect 
     any tables in the release.)

                 
                 AMERICAN TIME USE SURVEY--2006 RESULTS 

   
   The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor
reported today 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 versus 5.4 hours.
     
     --On the days that they worked, employed men worked about an hour more
       than employed women--8.0 versus 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 employ-
ment, 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 pro-
viding 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 spon-
sored 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 in-
dividuals.  Respondents were interviewed only once and reported their acti-
vities 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.  For a further description of the survey, see
the Technical Note.
   
                                  - 2 -
      
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 pop-
ulation 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 pro-
files differ based upon age, employment status, gender, and other character-
istics.  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.  (See table 1.)  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 activi-
ties only are done by a subset of the population.  For example, only 45 per-
cent 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 em-
ployed.  (See table 1.)  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.  (See table 4.)

     --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.  (See table 4.)
     
     --Many more people worked on weekdays than on weekend days:  84 percent
       of employed persons worked on an average weekday, compared with 35 per-
       cent on an average weekend day.  (See table 4.)

     --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.  (See table 6.)

     --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.  (See tables 4
       and 6.)

     --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.  (See tables
       5 and 7.)

                                       - 3 -

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.  (See
       table 1.)
   
     --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. 
       (See table 1.)
   
     --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 per-
       cent of women.  (See table 1.)
       
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.  (See table 1.)
     
     
     --More people did homework on weekdays than on weekend days--6.9 per-
       cent 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).  (See table 2.)
     
     --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.  (See table 3.)
                                  
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).  (See table 1.)
     
     --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.
       (See table 1.)
   
     --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.  (See table 1.)

     --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.  (See table 11.)

                                  - 4 -

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 pro-
       viding 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).  (See table 9.)
     
     --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.  (See
       table 9.)

     --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).
       (See table 10.)

     --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.  
       (See tables 9 and 10.)
                                 
Microdata Release

Today, BLS also released ten 2006 ATUS microdata files for users who wish
to do their own tabulations and analyses:  the Respondent file, the Roster
file, the Activity file, the Who file, the ATUS-CPS file, the Activity
summary file, the Case history file, the Call history file, the Trips file,
and the Replicate weights file.  In accordance with BLS and Census Bureau
policies that protect respondents' privacy, identifying information was
removed from the microdata files and some responses have been edited.  The
2006 microdata files are available on the BLS Web site at http://www.bls.
gov/tus/datafiles_2006.htm.  A brief description of the files follows:

      --The Respondent file contains information about ATUS respondents,
        including their labor force status and earnings.

      --The Roster file contains information about household members and
        nonhousehold children (under age 18) of ATUS respondents.  It
        includes information such as age and sex.

      --The Activity file contains information about how ATUS respondents
        spent one day.  It includes information such as activity codes,
        activity start and stop times, and locations.

      --The Who file contains codes that indicate who was present during
        each activity.

      --The ATUS-CPS file contains information collected in the CPS about
        all individuals selected to participate in ATUS and those living
        with them.  The information on the ATUS-CPS file was collected 2
        to 5 months before the ATUS interview.

      --The Activity summary file contains information about the total
        time each ATUS respondent spent doing each activity on the diary
        day (calculated from the Activity file), and selected variables
        from the Respondent file and the ATUS-CPS file.

      --The Case history file contains information about the interview
        process, such as interviewer identifiers and interview outcome
        codes.

      --The Call history file contains information about each interview
        attempt, including the call date and outcome.

      --The Trips file contains information about times the respondent
        was away from home for 2 nights or more in a specific reference
        month.

      --The Replicate weights file contains ATUS replicate weights and
        replicate base weights.
     
   
                                  - 5 -
For More Information
   
   For additional information, please see the Technical Note or the ATUS
Web site at http://www.bls.gov/tus/home.htm.  Additional information about 
the ATUS also may be obtained by e-mailing ATUSinfo@bls.gov or by calling 
(202) 691-6339.  Information in this release will be made available to sensory 
impaired individuals upon request.  Voice phone:  202-691-5200; TDD message 
referral phone:  1-800-877-8339.