My my, that data is interesting!

Oh Bureau of Labor Statistics, what a variety of information you have! It seems like there's always something new to discover. This week, for instance, we learned about the "American Time Use Survey" of 2009 (available at www.bls.gov/tus). Apparently the BLS has conducted this survey every year since 2003, and they ask people about the amount of time spent working, doing household activities, engaging in leisure or sports activities, and providing childcare. Neat!

Since we're employment economists, we took particular interest in the "time spent working" section of the data. Here are some of the things we learned:

- Employed persons worked an average of 7.5 hours on the days they worked. In general, more hours were worked on weekdays (Mon-Fri) than on weekends (Sat & Sun).

- On the days that they worked, employed men worked nearly an hour longer than employed women.

When it comes to working at home:

- Nearly a quarter of workers did some or all of their work at home.

- Multiple jobholders were almost twice as likely to work on an average weekend day as were single jobholders (59% compared with 32%). Multiple jobholders also were more likely to work at home than were single jobholders (32% compared with 22%).

- Self-employed workers were three times more likely other workers to have done some work at home.

If you'd like to see some of the findings related to time spent on leisure, housework, childcare and more, you should take a look at the press release from the BLS: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

If you're a fellow data lover, you can get the numbers (current and historical), at www.bls.gov/tus.