Unemployed vs Employed in US – How much time they spend doing everything

That deep divide between those with jobs and those without them reveals itself not just in well-known statistics on hiring and income but in the day-to-day details of how people live their lives. The unemployed have higher rates of depression, obesity and suicide. In interviews, they frequently report that the social and emotional impacts of joblessness — isolation from friends, the loss of a daily routine, feelings of uselessness — can be as hard as the financial toll. Many say it’s hard just to get out of bed in the morning.

Government data released Wednesday helps put numbers to those anecdotes. Every year, researchers from the Census Bureau1 ask thousands of Americans for a minute-by-minute accounting of how they spend their days.

The result, the American Time Use Survey, provides a remarkably detailed look at how much time Americans spend doing everything from grocery shopping 6.4 minutes a day, on average to helping their children with their homework 7.5 minutes for the average parent to lying awake in bed more than an hour and 20 minutes for the average insomniac. It isn’t much good as an economic indicator — it’s released just once a year, and the year-to-year changes are small and fairly volatile — but it paints a detailed picture of how the economy affects people’s lives.

Overall, the unemployed spent more time sleeping, watching television and taking classes than the employed, and less time eating out and going to parties. They spent about an hour and a half a day, on average, on activities related to finding a job, including career-related education. But the most interesting details come when you zoom in on specific demographic groups.

via It’s Hard to Get Off the Couch When You’re Unemployed | FiveThirtyEight.