Time Use Survey Fact Sheet (January – December, 2024)

The TUS measures time use across certain major indicators. ‘Participation rate’ is “the percentage of persons of specific categories performing that activity during the reference period.” It also measures ‘average time spent in a day per participant’ on an activity. This indicator only takes the participants of the activities into consideration while making the calculations. Finally, ‘average time spent in a day per person’ takes into consideration all the people falling into a specific category irrespective of them having performed the activity during the reference period.

According to the fact sheet, men have a participation rate of 60.8 per cent in employment and related activities. Among women, the rate is much lower – 20.7 per cent. Unpaid domestic services for household members showed the opposite trend with participation among women being 81.5 per cent and the participation among men being 27.1 per cent.

Women had double the participation rate for unpaid caregiving for household members than men – 34 per cent and 17.9 per cent respectively.

The fact sheet notes that people spent 440 minutes per day on employment and related activities. The average number of minutes was 473 among men and 341 among women.

Women spent 289 minutes each day on unpaid domestic services for household services whereas men spent only 88 minutes, the fact sheet states. On unpaid caregiving activities for household members, female and male participants spent 137 minutes and 75 minutes, respectively, each day.

An average of 171 minutes were spent each day by those surveyed on activities related to culture, leisure and mass media. The breakup according to gender was 177 minutes (for men) and 164 minutes (for women).

Around 89.3 per cent of children aged between six and 14 years said they engaged in learning-related activities. The average time spent on these in a day came up to around 413 minutes.

Focus and Factoids by Swadesha Sharma.