Not just eating and hygiene - I'd have to throw in commuting as well. Five hours a day. On what planet?
Oh, unless you took the whole weekend as leisure and averaged it across the week. (IMHO - doing laundry or getting my oil changed does *not* leisure make.)
This is averaged over all days, saturdays, sundays and holidays included. A person with an 8 hour a day, five days a week job averages about 5.25 hours of work a day if he gets two weeks of vacation a year. You would end up with an average of 3.7 hours work a day if your population contained about 30% non-working people and 70% 8 hour a day, 5 days a week working people. Which seems about right: the employment to population ratio is a bit over 60%. Heavy overtime is probably compensated for by part-time workers.
This is not the modal day, which most of the reaction has assumed; it is the mean day.
The only way to get me to five hours of leisure time is to include eating, getting dressed, etc. in that category...
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 11:38 AM
but when you're tenured, FL, that will move up to 24 hours.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 12:19 PM
Not just eating and hygiene - I'd have to throw in commuting as well. Five hours a day. On what planet?
Oh, unless you took the whole weekend as leisure and averaged it across the week. (IMHO - doing laundry or getting my oil changed does *not* leisure make.)
Posted by LarryB | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 12:32 PM
only 5 hours? jeez. that sucks.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 1:40 PM
My guess is that 3.7 hours of work is our clue that leisure activities can be pursued at the workplace.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 4:48 PM
I considered that too. I don't think that's how they coded, but I'm not positive (PDF).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-15-04 4:51 PM
This is averaged over all days, saturdays, sundays and holidays included. A person with an 8 hour a day, five days a week job averages about 5.25 hours of work a day if he gets two weeks of vacation a year. You would end up with an average of 3.7 hours work a day if your population contained about 30% non-working people and 70% 8 hour a day, 5 days a week working people. Which seems about right: the employment to population ratio is a bit over 60%. Heavy overtime is probably compensated for by part-time workers.
This is not the modal day, which most of the reaction has assumed; it is the mean day.
Posted by jam | Link to this comment | 09-16-04 9:35 AM