American Time Use Survey: Charts by Topic: Work and employment

American Time Use Survey

Charts by Topic: Work and employment

Findings from the 2015 survey:

Employed persons worked an average of 7.6 hours on the days they worked. More hours were worked, on average, on weekdays than on weekend days�8.0 hours compared with 5.6 hours.
On the days they worked, employed men worked 42 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�8.2 hours compared with 7.8 hours.
The share of workers doing some or all of their work at home grew from 19 percent in 2003�the first year the ATUS was conducted�to 24 percent in 2015. In this same period, the average time employed persons spent working at home on days they worked increased by 40 minutes (from 2.6 hours to 3.2 hours).

Multiple jobholders were more likely to work on a weekend day or holiday than single jobholders. (Data are from the 2015 survey).

Self-employed workers were more than twice as likely as wage and salary workers to have done some work at home on days they worked; multiple jobholders were also more likely to work at home than single jobholders. Working at home includes any time persons did work at home and is not restricted to persons whose usual workplace is their home. (Data are from the 2015 survey).

Among educational groups, those with a bachelor's degree or higher were most likely to work at home. On the days they worked, 38 percent of individuals with a bachelor's degree or higher worked from home compared to 19 percent of those with some college and 14 percent of those with a high school diploma. (These data are averages for 2011 to 2015).

On days that they worked, more than three-quarters of employed individuals age 15 and over worked between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. (These data are averages for 2011 to 2015).