Data Underload / time use

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

By Nathan Yau

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.

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