Cycle of Many, a 24-hour snapshot for a day in the life of Americans

Available as a limited edition print. Order through the FlowingData shop.

This is a 24-hour snapshot for a day in the life of Americans. Each ring represents an activity with a color. More dots means a greater percentage of people doing the respective activity during a certain time of day.

If you start at the top of the circle, you’ll be at 9:00am when most people who work are already working. Move clockwise, and you see the flows of the day. People break for lunch at noon, get off work around 5:00pm, shift to dinner and then relax. Most people are sleeping by midnight but a small percentage of people are work at night.

Focus on the inside rings versus the outer rings for a rough comparison between work life and home life, each with its own responsibilities.

Source

The data comes from the American Time Use Survey 2020, which is run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I downloaded microdata via IPUMS.

 

Become a member. Support an independent site. Make great charts.

See What You Get

Favorites

One Dataset, Visualized 25 Ways

“Let the data speak” they say. But what happens when the data rambles on and on?

A Day in the Life: Work and Home

I simulated a day for employed Americans to see when and where they work.

Unemployment in America, Mapped Over Time

Watch the regional changes across the country from 1990 to 2016.

10 Best Data Visualization Projects of 2015

These are my picks for the best of 2015. As usual, they could easily appear in a different order on a different day, and there are projects not on the list that were also excellent.