- The office is winning, but a third of workers stay home.
- There’s a chore gap, with women spending more time on housework.
- Watching TV dominates free hours.
by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics paints a portrait of how we spend the 24 hours in a given day, across a range of activities that include work, play and household chores.
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This week, the portrait of time’s passage in 2025 was released.
One of the most striking findings in the survey is a sharp decline in the share of Americans who spend time on social connections. In 2015, 38% of U.S. adults communicated or socialized with others on an average day, compared with 30% in 2025. And when they did, they spent less time, averaging just 35 minutes compared to 41 a decade before.
More hours are being spent on computers or playing games than in 2015. Time spent on activities like board games, video games, social media and other leisure computer activities increased from 25 minutes in 2015 to 37 minutes in 2025. And those 15 to 19 averaged 90 minutes on those pursuits, surpassing any other age group.
The survey data for 2025 includes interviews with about 6,100 individuals. Sample households are chosen from those that completed their eighth (final) interview for the Current Population Survey, the nation’s monthly household labor force survey. Time-use sample households are selected to ensure that estimates will be nationally representative.
Here are some other key findings:
Work from home? Or home from work?
More than a third of those who had jobs (35%) said they did some or all of their work at home on the days they worked, while 70% said they did some or all of it at their place of employment. Employed women were more apt to work at home than employed men, 38% vs. 31%.
Employed people worked 8.5 hours on an average weekday and 5.5 hours on an average weekend day. But more people worked on weekdays than on weekend days, 81% compared to 30%.
The survey also found that among those who worked on an average weekend days, education made a difference in how long they worked. High school grads with no college worked an average of 6.4 hours, compared to 4 hours for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
For workers 25 and older, those with more education were more likely to work at home than were those with less education. Just over half (51%) of employed people with at least a four-year college degree did some work from home on the days they worked, compared to 19% of those with less education.
What about home life and household tasks?
On the average day, just over 4 out of 5 people did some kind of household activity, such as yard work or cooking or housework, spending about 2 hours on the tasks. More women were so engaged in household tasks than were men, 87% to 75%. The survey found women spent more time, as well, averaging 2.8 hours on those tasks compared to 2.1 hours for men.
And the older they were, the more time was spent on household activities. On an average day, those 15 to 19 spent 43 minutes on household activities, compared to 2.7 hours for older adults age 65 and up.
Having kids mattered, too. Those living with children under age 18 who were not employed spent an hour more than those who were doing household activities on the typical day, 3.1 hours compared to 1.7 hours.
But the real time for household chores is weekend days, when 40% of adults do housework. They were, however, just slightly more likely to prep food and clean up on weekdays than on weekends (66% vs. 63%).
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Forget work, time for fun!
Almost everyone engaged in leisure or sports activities on a typical day, whether watching TV, socializing or exercising. Men were an itty bit more likely to do so, though, at 96% vs. 94%. They also spent more time on leisure activities, at 5.6 hours a day compared to 4.8 hours for women.
Those 75 and older averaged 7.4 hours in some sort of leisure or sport activity every day, surpassing any other age group. Those 35 to 44 averaged 3.9 hours, which was less than any of the other age groups.
TV took up half of the leisure time, per the survey, at an average of 2.6 hours a day.
People who were employed and living in households with no minor children spent 4.6 hours on average a day on leisure and sports activities — more than a full hour more than those who are employed and have young children.
Who’s minding the children?
The survey defined primary childcare in a household as activities like reading to a child or providing physical care. And those who have young children, under age 6, spend considerably more time than those with older children, 2.3 hours a day vs. 47 minutes a day.
Women spend more time on the average day with young children doing primary childcare activities than men do, 2.7 hours compared to 1.7. Per the report, “This includes providing physical care, such as bathing or feeding a child (1.3 hours compared to 38 minutes) and travel related to care of household children (16 minutes compared to 10 minutes), among other activities.”
Employed adults with young children spend about half the time on those activities as adults who are not employed (1.7 hours compared to 3.3 hours).
“Adults living in households with at least one child under age 13 spent an average of 5.1 hours per day providing secondary childcare — that is, they had at least one child in their care while doing activities other than primary childcare. Secondary childcare provided by adults living in households with children under age 13 was most commonly provided while doing leisure activities (1.9 hours) or household activities (1.2 hours),” the survey found.
Watch the clock
The Pew Research Center in March created a different view of the time-spent reckoning, looking at sleeping, eating, housework, spending money, caregiving, working, watching TV, socializing, relaxing, exercising, civic and religious activities and personal grooming.
Then they visualized it on the face of a clock. And they broke a lot of it out by gender, noting significant differences. It’s worth checking out.
The latest survey release notes that some federal agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, were shut down for a month in 2025 and the survey was suspended for five weeks. That matters because the time use survey interviews are a daily event focused on “time diaries about yesterday,” so none of the data reflects what happened from Sept. 30 to Nov. 11, 2025. Data collection resumed Nov. 13. The report notes that it’s possible those affected by the shutdown may have spent their time differently and that’s not reflected in the report. Seasonal activities might also be different, though historically, the survey hasn’t found much seasonal difference.
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