Posts Tagged ‘American Time Use Survey’
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god”*…
A wild beast, a god… or just aging:
Time with friends, colleagues, siblings, and children diminishes over the course of a lifetime. The older we get, the person we spend the most time with is the one we see in the mirror.
That’s the conclusion of a recent, fascinating analysis of data from the American Time Use Survey, an annual census by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics of how Americans spend their hours…
More at “These charts show who you’ll spend your time with across your lifetime.”
* Aristotle
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As we wince at Sartre’s observation that “if you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company,” we might send courteous birthday greetings to Giovanni della Casa; he was born on this date in 1503. A Florentine poet, diplomat, and inquisitor, he is best remembered as a writer on etiquette and society, especially for his famous 1558 treatise on polite behavior, Il Galateo overo de’ costumi.
Portrait of Giovanni della Casa by Jacopo Pontormo
“There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want”*…
How do you spend your days? Since 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Time Use Survey have asked thousands of people this question. See the answers– and use interactive charts to see where you fit– at “Counting the Hours.”
* Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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As we consider a nap, we might send thoughtful birthday greetings to Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher whose rationalism and determinism put him in opposition to Descartes and helped lay the foundation for The Enlightenment, and whose pantheistic views led to his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam; he was born on this date in 1632.
As men’s habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honored save justice and charity.
– Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670
“Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go”*…
Researchers often look at the number of hours worked, but rarely do they ask the question of when. Fortunately, the government conducts an annual study called the American Time Use Survey that tracks how people spend their days…
The interactive graph pictured above (and available live here) shows the share of workers who say they’re working in a given hour, grouped by occupation. The tabs at the top allow one to focus on different job categories to see how their average workdays differ from one another. For example, servers and cooks have a schedule that’s essentially the opposite of all other occupations; their hours peak during lunch and hold steady well into the evening.
Explore more at “Who’s In The Office? The American Workday In One Graph.”
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As we breathe a sigh of relief that these studies don’t extend to what one does at work, we might recall it was on this date in 1929 that panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange (four times the normal volume at the time), and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 12%. Remembered as “Black Tuesday,” this was the conclusive event in the Crash of 1929, and is often cited as the start of the Great Depression.
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