Americans are worka🍃holics — at least according to the ubiquitous headlines fretting over our supposed lack of leisure time.
In fact, Americans may be busy, but they’re not lacking in down ti♉me — a reality that doesn’t quite make for the panicked press we’re used to getting on this scor🐼e:
“American🐼s Take Fewest Vacation Days in Four Decades,” according to CNN. “Way too many workers took ZERO vacation days in 20꧑14,” declaimed the Huffington Post. “Why Don’t Americans Take Vacation?” wondered The New York Times.
Perhaps trying to goad Americans into taking vacation, the US Travel Association recently issued a report saying, “Americans are w�👍�ork martyrs.”
According to a recent survey commissioned by Skift, a website covering the travel industry, mo🐽st Americans wiღll take little to no vacation this season either.
When asked why, 31 percent said they couldn’t afford it, another 30 percent said they were simply too busy. Americans are often compared to our European counterparts, who a🎐re guaranteed two or three times as many vacation days as the average American and typica🔜lly take every last one.
What’s wrong with us?
Don’t we like vacation?
It’s not cultural differences that set us ꦗapart, John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR, told Marketwatch.
“I don’t think that Americans love their families less than German or French workers who take all their vacation time,” he says. “Americans have less job security than European workers. That’s why they eat lunch at their desk and work late.🐷 And if you’re on vacation you are likely to miss important meetings.”
Well, maybe they’re important. Or maybe we just need🦄 to look busy. Because in reality, most of us aren’t wo꧂rking as hard as we think.
A🌠ccording to the American Time Use Survey, put out annually by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend a little more tha🐬n five hours per day (averaging weekends and weekdays) on work and work-related activities.
Which still leaves us 19 hours per day. How do we spend them? Well, you might get the impression from talking to your friends and colleagues that we’re all bleary-eyed drones who can barely find a spare minute to catch 40 win✤ks.
But we aver🐼age eight hours and 48 minutes a day of sleeping🦩.
We’re actuall𓂃y getting more than the recommended dose of shut-eye.
We’re also spending a good hour and 10 minutes eating and drinking. So it’s not all sandwiche🌠s being wolfed down at t🐷he desk.
But 🅷here’s the real revelation from the survey: Americans spend three hours and 36 minutes per day watching television. This isn’t a real revelation, though, if you’ve looked at previous time-use suꩵrveys, because those numbers have been steadily growing for decades.
But it’s still a shocking number.ꩵ We basically spend an average of one day out of every week watching TV. By contrasღt, we spend 24 minutes a day on educational activities.
On some l🎃evel, this is understandable: For many people, the hours sitting in front of the TV are simply all th♓ey can muster after a day of being at the office and chasing the kids.
And perhaps the average is a litt🎀le bit misleading. Corporate CEOs and single mothers working double shifts probably aren’t the one🅺s on the leading edge of that trend.
But television does have t﷽he habit of making time seem to 🍸go by faster. Which is great if your kid is home with the flu. But not so great if you’re looking to be a happy, productive grown-up.
So why does it seem as if we’re so busy all the ti🍃me?
Time is a little bit like space. As anyone who has ever moved to a bigger🎶 house knows, you’re never going to have the extra spa🙈ce you imagine. Everything just barely fits.
Recent college graduates starting out their jobs think they’re busy, but they’ll wonder what they did with all their spare time when they have kids to care for and they’re at the peak of their careers. Everything just barely 𝐆fits.
In other words, we’ll always be t𒆙oo busy for vacation.