Results from the 2018 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), an annual government report tabulating the various activities U.S. workers engage in during any given day, reveal that 23.7% of full-time employed persons (23.3% of men and 24.2% of women) worked at home on an average workday, an increase of 0.3% above 2017. And while most of the 2018 data show only minor overall variations from the previous year, the ATUS shows (without further explanation) that the number of women working at home on an average day and classified as “Part Time Employed” – fewer than 35 hours per week at all jobs combined – jumped from 23.9% to 33.9%, a 10% increase.
The ATUS has been conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since 2003 to track the number of hours Americans spend in twelve different daily activities, including “working and work-related activities,” the primary focus of this memo. Working and work-related activities are further broken down by gender, education level, occupation, earnings, childcare, and teleworking.
We report on the ATUS from time to time as an indicator of U.S. employment trends. The complete results for the 2018 ATUS can be found online.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.