Time Use, Unemployment, and Well-Being: An Empirical Analysis Using British Time-Use Data

• Published in: Journal of happiness studies 2021-08, Vol.22 (6), p.2525-2548
• Main Authors: Hoang, Thi Truong An, Knabe, Andreas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cognition; Economics; Employment; Leisure; Life satisfaction; Personality and Social Psychology; Philosophy; Positive Psychology; Quality of Life Research; Research Paper; Social Sciences; Time use; Unemployment; Well being
• ISSN: 1389-4978; 1573-7780
• DOI: 10.1007/s10902-020-00320-x

We use nationally representative data from the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/2015 to investigate how a person’s employment status is related to time use and cognitive and affective dimensions of subjective well-being. We do not find clear indications that employed and unemployed persons experience different average levels of emotional well-being when they engage in the same kinds of activities. For the employed, working belongs to one of the least enjoyable activities of their day. They also spend a large share of their time at work and on work-related activities. The unemployed, instead, spend more time on leisure and more enjoyable activities. When looking at duration-weighted average affective well-being over the entire waking time of the day, the unemployed experience, on average, more enjoyment than the employed. For the employed, the more hours they have to work on a specific day, the lower the average enjoyment they experience on that day. Differentiating the analyses by weekdays and weekends supports the finding that being able to freely allocate one’s non-work time is associated with higher levels of affective well-being. In line with previous studies on cognitive well-being, we find that the unemployed report substantially lower levels of life satisfaction than the employed.