american minute .
258,954 diaries · 2003–2025
A TYPICAL DAY IN THE UNITED STATES

What are people doing?

Choose a minute. Explore the lives happening around it.

Local time of day

Explore how Americans spend their day

At 3 PM on an average weekday, 35.1% of Americans age 15 and older are working and 3.8% are asleep; at 3 AM, 94.6% are asleep. Americans sleep 8 hr 44 min a day on average. Every number comes from 258,954 American Time Use Survey diaries, 2003–2025.

By activity

By time of day

Questions

THE DATA, IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Every diary since 2003.

258,954 complete diaries. 4,994,172 activity records. Twenty-three years of everyday life.

What do these numbers mean?

Estimates for the U.S. civilian, noninstitutional population age 15 and older at the selected local clock time, or for the people matching your filters. Counts represent the average population across 2003–2025, not today’s population. “Your time” uses your device’s clock. This is not a live or time-zone-synchronized national count, or a prediction for a specific date.

Combining years gives more diaries but blends real changes over time, such as the pandemic. The “Across the years” chart shows each year separately so you can see those changes.

How are years and activities combined?

Each person’s final survey weight contributes during their reported activity interval: TUFNWGTP (the 2006 method, comparable across all years) for every year except 2020, which uses TU20FWGT, as BLS directs. Counts are divided by the number of days the 23 years represent. Data collection paused from March 18 to May 9, 2020, so 2020 represents 313 days. After the October 1–November 12, 2025 shutdown, BLS weighted the remaining fourth-quarter diaries to represent the whole quarter. A diary begins at 4 AM; its after-midnight portion keeps the starting day’s weekday/weekend assignment.

The overview partitions all activities into 17 groups. Detailed view uses every pooled six-digit activity code. BLS harmonized a few codes so they mean the same thing across all years; their descriptions list the original codes they combine. Reported drivers (TEWHERE = 12) are assigned to driving first, so detailed rows sum to their overview parent.

Filters, places, and company

People filters (sex, age, work status, children at home) use each respondent’s answers on their diary day. Children means household children under 18, grouped by the youngest child’s age. One 2010 respondent with no full- or part-time status is counted as full time. Advanced filters add demographics, education, work, earnings, household, and diary day from the ATUS files, and family income, marital status, citizenship, veteran status, disability, region, and state from the household’s final Current Population Survey interview, two to five months before the diary day. Every filter accepts several options at once. Each menu notes when a question was first asked or how it is measured.

Activity-context filters keep only activities recorded at that place or with that company. While one is on, the summary shows everyone in that context (for example, everyone at a restaurant, whatever they are doing) instead of Sleeping and Awake, and every number on the page follows the same filters. BLS doesn’t record location or company for sleeping, grooming, or private activities, and didn’t record company while working before 2010. Someone can be with several groups at once, so company shares can add up to more than 100%.

Sleeping, awake, and sample size

Sleeping includes sleep and naps (010101 and 010199), excluding reported sleeplessness. Awake means everyone not classified as sleeping, including unclassified time; it is not a direct measurement of consciousness. Driving includes car, truck, and motorcycle drivers, not passengers. Primary activities do not capture all multitasking.

Every selected activity shows its actual unweighted number of diaries at that minute. Fewer than 30 observations is flagged as a small sample; this is a caution rule, not an official BLS publication threshold. Narrow filters can leave few diaries. Zero observations does not establish that nobody was doing the activity. Confidence intervals have not been computed.

Sources and validation

BLS 2003–2025 multi-year microdata · Pooling guidance · Weighting methods · 2003–2025 activity lexicon

Every diary covers 1,440 contiguous minutes. The data reproduces all 96 hourly sleeping values in BLS Table A-3 for 2021–2024 and the published 2025 average of 9.03 hours of sleep. Detailed activities sum to their parent at every minute, and filtered estimates are checked against an independent pass over the raw BLS files. This is an independent visualization, not an official BLS publication.