In February 2025, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) released the 2nd edition all-India Time Use Survey (TUS) conducted during January-December, 2024 by the National Statistics Office (NSO) under MoSPI.
- As per TUS 2024, the amount of time spent by women in ‘employment-related activities’ was 71 minutes per day in 2024, which is 10 minutes more compared to TUS 2019.
- While, the amount of time spent by men in ‘employment-related activities’ has increased from 263 minutes per day (in TUS, 2019) to 287 minutes per day (in TUS, 2024).
About Time Use Survey (TUS):
i.The 1st ever all-India TUS was conducted by the NSO, MoSPI from January, 2019 to December, 2019.
ii.It is a national-level survey which examines how people allocate their time to various daily activities. The main objective of this survey is to measure the participation of men and women for both paid and unpaid activities.
iii.It provides information on the time spent in various activities such as: unpaid caregiving activities, volunteer work, and unpaid domestic service-producing activities of the household members, among others.
iv.Other than India, countries which also conduct the national TUS are: Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the United States of America (USA) and China.
Key Features of TUS 2024:
i.The latest edition of TUS had asked respondents about their activities performed in the designated time slots of 30 minutes and the same was recorded against the corresponding slot.
- The information on time use was collected through Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) for persons aged 6 years and above with a reference period of a day.
ii.The survey has covered 1,39,487 households including 83, 247 in rural and 56,240 in urban areas of the country.
- It has covered 4, 54,192 persons aged 6 years and above including 2,85,389 and 1,68,803 from rural and urban areas of the country, respectively.
iii.The survey used 3 key indicators:
- Participation rate, defined as the percentage of persons performing that activity during the day;
- Average time spent in day per participant, calculated considering only those persons who participated in the activity; and
- Average time spent in a day per person, calculated by considering all the persons irrespective of whether they participated in the activity or not.
Key Findings of TUS 2024:
i.Percentage share of employment participation: It showed that 75% of the males and 25% of the females in the age group of 15-59 years, participated in the employment and related activities in a day i.e. 24 hours (hrs) in 2024, as against 70.9% for males and 21.8% for females during 2019.
ii.Unpaid domestic services for household members: The amount spent by female participants aged 15-59 years in unpaid domestic service has declined from 315 minutes (in 2019) to 305 minutes during 2024 in those activities; this signifies the shift from unpaid to paid activities.
- Also, the amount of time spent by a men on ‘unpaid domestic services for household members’ in a day has decreased marginally by 1 minute, to 24 minutes in 2024 compared to 2019.
iii.Caregiving activities: 41% of the females and 21.4% of the males in the age group of 15-59 years, participated in caregiving activities.
- Also, female participants aged 15-59 years spent about 140 minutes in caregiving activities compared to 74 minutes spent by male participants of the same age-group.
iv.Cultural, Leisure and Education Activities: The data revealed that 11% of the people aged 6 years and above spent their days’ time in culture, leisure, mass media, and sports practices during 2024, compared to 9.9% of the days’ spent during 2019.
v.Self-care Activities: As per TUS 2024, persons aged 6 years and above spent 708 minutes in a day on self-care and maintenance activities.
- Females and Males of this age group spent 706 minutes and 710 minutes, respectively in such activities.
Other Key findings on Average time spent per day per person in activities:
i.The data showed that the amount of time spent by a women on ‘unpaid domestic services for household members’ in a day decreased by 7 minutes, from 243 minutes (in 2019) to 236 minutes (in 2024).
ii.The survey noted that both men and women spent more time in a day on ‘unpaid caregiving activities for household members’ in 2024.
- It further revealed that women have 27% more time i.e. 47 minutes compared to 2019 and similarly, the amount of time spent by men in such activities has increased 18% (13 minutes) in 2024.
iii.As per the survey, women spent 141 minutes on ‘culture, leisure, mass-media and sports practices’ in 2024 compared to 141 minutes spent on such activities in 2019.
- While, the amount of time spent by men for such activities increased by 23 minutes, to 169 minutes in 2024.
iv.The survey highlighted that the amount of time spent by both men and women on ‘socializing and communication, community participation and religious practice’ decreased to 124 minutes and 126 minutes, respectively, compared to 2019.
- In contrast, the amount of time spent by both men and women on ‘culture, leisure, mass-media and sports practices” increased to 169 minutes and 148 minutes, respectively, compared to 2019.
About Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementaion (MoSPI):
Minister of State (MoS)(Independent Charge, IC)-Rao Inderjit Singh (Constituency- Gurugram, Haryana)
