Roughly 1 in 10 of the American workforce is unemployed, but that doesn’t mean that they’re sitting idle, doing nothing. They’ve found other forms of labor to occupy their time.
The American Time Use Survey asked thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008. I wish the data for more recent years were available in this format, but this interactive metric chart gives you a peek at what our days are spent doing.
tiffany says:
What a great chart…sleep, eat, work, watch t.v…repeat. No wonder we all have such collective angst.
Maybe you can forward this chart to Herman Cain the next time he says the chronic unemployed since the recession should just go “get a job”. All of our leaders dropped the ball on this one though, Obama never should have wasted all of his political capital tackling health care reform when everyone knows
“its the economy stupid”. Now he’s scrambling and doing now what he needed to do two years ago…and maybe two years too late for his reelection bid; and if the if the republicans get their way, the poor are really going to suffer…well make that that the 99%. 🙂
kenn says:
Yeah, it’s so predictable that while the current administration will use foreign policy successes to validate their qualification to be reelected, Americans will be hurting more than they were last election. Jobs, man. We need jobs.
Oh, and Herman Cain, please be quiet.