Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

How Do U.S. Men and Women Spend Their Time?

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From morning routines to late-night TV, Americans move from task to task throughout their day. How they use their time looks different for older and younger adults. And across age groups, it differs by gender. Using data from the American Time Use Survey – conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau – we explore how daily time use changes across the life course.

We looked at 12 different activities to see how Americans spend their time in a typical day, including activities like sleeping, eating and housework.

We calculated how much time U.S. adults spend on each activity in a day, on average, in hours and minutes. We then displayed that on a stopwatch. This stopwatch shows that Americans spend an average of 1 hour and 57 minutes a day doing housework.

But men and women sometimes differ in the amount of time they dedicate to each activity. For example, men spend an average of 1 hour 34 minutes on housework each day, while women spend 2 hours 19 minutes. The dot next to “women” indicates that there’s a significant difference between women and men.

Average amount of time spent daily doing housework
Average amount of time spent doing housework

We looked at 12 different activities to see how Americans spend their time in a typical day, including activities like sleeping, eating and housework.

We calculated how much time U.S. adults spend on each activity in a day, on average, in hours and minutes. We then displayed that on a stopwatch. This stopwatch shows that Americans spend an average of 1 hour and 57 minutes a day doing housework.

But men and women sometimes differ in the amount of time they dedicate to each activity. For example, men spend an average of 1 hour 34 minutes on housework each day, while women spend 2 hours 19 minutes. The dot next to “women” indicates that there’s a significant difference between women and men.

Use the interactive below to explore how Americans spend their time across different decades of life.

Sleeping
Eating
Housework
Spending money
Caregiving
Working
Watching TV
Socializing
Relaxing
Exercising
Civic/religious activities
Personal grooming

Adults in their ____ spending an average amount of time daily on

20s

30s

40s

50s

60s

70s+

A dot next to “men” or “women” indicates there’s a statistically significant difference between the two groups in time spent on this activity.

About this research

This Pew Research Center analysis shows how men and women spend their time across the life course in the United States.

Why did we do this?

Pew Research Center conducts high-quality research to inform the public, journalists and decision-makers.

This analysis is part of our long-standing research focus on gender and gender roles, including analyzing differences in time use.  

How did we do this?

This analysis uses the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, to calculate time spent on different activities by age and gender. We averaged data over three survey years – 2022, 2023 and 2024 – for a robust sample. Each activity is averaged over all seven days of the week, except for work. Work is averaged over weekdays to reflect the typical working schedule for most Americans.

Microdata used in this analysis comes from IPUMS provided by the University of Minnesota. IPUMS standardizes variable names and coding across years as much as possible, making it easier to analyze the data over time.