Time Use Survey Report
A recently released report, 'Around the Clock', analyses how NZers spend their time, drawing on information from NZ's first national Time Use Survey, conducted in 1998/99. Although results of the survey have been available previously, this report presents data from the survey in the form of easy-to-understand graphs and commentary aimed at a wider audience. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between paid and unpaid work.
'Around the Clock' reveals that both males and females aged 12 and over, work an average of 7 hours a day or 49 hours a week. However, although about 60% of men's work is paid, almost 70% of women's work is unpaid. Unpaid work includes household work, care-giving, purchasing goods and services for households, and voluntary work outside the home. Women average 4.8 hours of unpaid work each day, compared with men's 2.8 hours.
Household work is the most common type of unpaid work. In this category, the most time-consuming activities are food and drink preparation and clean-up, and indoor cleaning and laundry. Women spend an average of 62 minutes a day on food and drink preparation and clean-up, and 61 minutes a day on cleaning and laundry, compared with men's 29 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively.
The time NZers put into unpaid work over the course of a year equates to 2 million full-time (40 hours a week) jobs. This compares with 1.7 million full-time jobs in time spent on labour force activity.
Labour force activity, when averaged over all people aged 12 and over, takes up 29 hours a week for males and 16 hours for females. For both men and women, the longest hours are worked between the ages of 45 and 54, when men spend an average of 47 hours a week on labour force activity and women spend 33 hours a week.
Maori on average spend less time than non-Maori on paid work, but spend more time on unpaid work. Maori females aged 12 and over average 5 hours of unpaid work each day, compared with 4.7 hours for non-Maori females. Maori males average 3.1 hours of unpaid work compared with 2.8 hours for non-Maori males. This reflects the fact that Maori spend more time than non-Maori on care-giving within the household and on caring for or helping non-household members.
Free Time
The report also shows how people spend their time when they are not working. A large part of this time is taken up with personal care, including personal hygiene and grooming, sleeping, eating and drinking. On average, people spend 10.8 hours a day on these activities, including 8.5 hours sleeping, 1.5 hours eating and drinking and 46 minutes on personal hygiene and grooming.
Among free-time activities, watching television and videos is the most popular pursuit, taking up just under 2 hours a day as the main activity, and another 48 minutes when people are simultaneously engaged in other tasks, such as household work or care-giving. People in the youngest and oldest age groups spend the most time watching television or videos. Socialising and conversation is another important activity, taking up an average of 2.5 hours a day, although for more than half that time people are simultaneously engaged in other activities.
The more physically active free-time activities take up less time on average, with organised sport and exercise taking up 8 minutes a day and 13 minutes a day, respectively. Interestingly, time spent on organised sport is greatest amongst those aged 65 and over (an average of 1.5 hours a week).
| The report costs $25.00 and can be ordered via email from Statistics NZ at publications@stats.govt.nz , or by visiting their website at www.stats.govt.nz |
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