Time use in the NetherlandsEdition 1

How much time do we spend on paid work and related activities?

Time use data provide unique information about labour market participation and related activities. Where contractual hours reflect a person’s employment contract, the hours reported in the time diary reflect people’s daily lives. During the diary week, people may work more than their contractual hours because they are working overtime, or less because they are ill or on holiday. The time use data also allow us to look at activities that are indirectly related to paid work, such as commuting, work-related training and looking for a new job.

Averages for the full Dutch population mask wide differences in the time spent on paid work. There are differences between men and women, between people with different educational levels and between different age groups and family types. These differences are often related to a person’s labour market position and family demands (Van Echtelt et al. 2016; SER 2016; Roeters 2017). In this card we therefore look at men and women, people with high and low educational level and people of different ages and family status.

How is the time spent on paid work measured?

The umbrella term ‘employment’ as used here encompasses four activities: performing paid work; commuting to and from work; training during working hours; and looking for work. Averaged out over all Dutch citizens aged 12 years and older, people spend 20.5 hours per week on employment. If we look only at those who are between the ages of 20 and 65, the average is seven hours per week higher. Within this age category, we can also zoom in on the employed individuals. This group works an average of 35 hours per week.

The lion’s share of ‘employment time’ is spent performing paid work. People spend three and a quarter hours per week travelling to and from work.

The time diaries also showed how much time people spend on courses, workshops and other types of training during working hours and how much time they spend looking for work. As less than 5% of the working-age population takes part in these activities, the time spent in these activities averages out at less than 10 minutes per week.

Continuity....

In 2016, people spent two hours per week more on paid employment than in 2006. If we look only at employed respondents, the increase is slightly larger, at four hours per week. This increase is especially visible among employed women: in 2016 they spent five hours per week more on work-related activities than in 2006. It is important to note that this does not mean that there was a similar increase in the contractual hours. The Emancipation Monitor 2016 (Emancipatiemonitor 2016) shows that the contractual working hours of employed women increased by an average of one hour per week between 2005 and 2015 (Portegijs & Van Brakel 2016, p. 67). The contractual hours of men fell by one hour over the same period.

...despite the economic crisis

The limited changes in paid worktime are surprising, given the deep economic crisis to which the Dutch labour market has been exposed over the past decade (CBS 2017). At the low point of the crisis in 2011, people were not working less than before and after the crisis. If anything, the opposite was the case: employed men, in particular, spent more time on work in that year. It may be that they increased their working hours during the crisis in order to ensure their job security. It is also possible that it became easier to continue working from home on a laptop or smartphone.

It is possible that the working hours of people with high and low educational levels have developed differently over the last decade. Technological changes on the labour market mainly pose a threat to the labour market position of those with intermediate education, because their work is relatively often replaced by technology (Herweijer & Josten 2014; Van den Berge & Ter Weel 2015).

At the same time, telework is more common among those with a higher educational level, so these workers may be most tempted to work overtime (Roeters et al. 2016b; SER 2016).

The figure above shows the educational differences in the time spent on paid employment and related activities (for those between the ages of 20 and 65 years). Employed and non-employed individuals are included. The higher a person’s education level, the more time he or she spends on paid employment. Men with an intermediate educational level resemble men with a high educational level. Among women, those with an intermediate educational level occupy a distinct middle position. Between 2006 and 2016 the differences among women have increased slightly, while for men, the difference between those with low and high education has increased from five hours to no less than nine hours per week. This is mainly because the amount of time spent on employment by low-educated men (of working age) fell sharply between 2006 and 2011. Possible, lower educated man have been affected more by the economic crisis.

Paid work over the life course

The amount of time that people are able and willing to allocate to paid work varies considerably depending on their personal circumstances (SER 2016). Does someone still go to school? Are there children that need to be looked after? The figures below show that the reported time on employment varies across age and family status.

Analyses of labour market participation often focus on people of working age; that is why this card mostly focused on those between the ages of 20 and 64 year. However, young people also report around 12 hours of paid work per week; these are often (though not always) side jobs, student jobs, etc. The reported working hours of older people are much lower; Older women (65+) work less than half an hour per week on average, older men two hours.

Gender gap largest in life stage with children

Single women report a similar number of hours in paid employment as single men. Among those in a household with a partner and child(ren), men work 18.5 hours more per week than women. This pattern is in line with earlier research showing that gender differences in working hours increase with age. A crucial life event is the arrival of the first child (Wiesmann et al. 2008; Roeters et al. 2016a). Women often reduce their working hours in order to be able to spend time on the care for the child, while men tend to increase rather than decrease their work hours after the birth of a child. These different choices reflect different role patterns: women feel responsible for looking after the baby, while men feel responsible for providing financial security (Wiesmann et al. 2008; Bianchi & Milkie 2010).