How Much More Time We Spent at Home

We had to do a lot more from home in 2020. Based on the American Time Use Survey, we spent about 62% of our waking time at home. In contrast, we only spent about 50% in 2019. Here is the breakdown by activity on a weekday.

For each year, I counted the total minutes for each activity and divided by total waking time to estimate percentages. For privacy reasons, the where is not provided for when respondents were sleeping, grooming, or doing personal activities. I suspect the total percentage of time spent at home for both years would increase if these times were included.

For a better sense of how everything shifted, here’s a different view that shows the percentage of time spent at home, by activity, on a weekday.

With the exception of household activities, which already happened mostly at home, there was an increase in every category. Work from home went up 142%. Education at home more than doubled. Good times.