--- title: What Unemployed People Do With Their Time description: While most of unemployed people spend a sizable part of their day job-hunting, plenty of others seem to, well, futz around canonical: https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-26T16:00:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:37.821Z og:title: What Unemployed People Do With Their Time og:description: While most of unemployed people spend a sizable part of their day job-hunting, plenty of others seem to, well, futz around og:url: https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt582fcf72764f8183/69877b14f887dc2974e89a4e/169055570-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5000 og:image:height: 2813 og:image:alt: girls-chatting-cafe og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Unemployed People Do With Their Time twitter:description: While most of unemployed people spend a sizable part of their day job-hunting, plenty of others seem to, well, futz around twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt582fcf72764f8183/69877b14f887dc2974e89a4e/169055570-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Unemployed People Do With Their Time > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. Culture editor Eliza Berman taps TIME's collective taste and perspective to surface what is worth watching, reading, talking about and sharing, and why. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=702a6fa8-e818-4eab-95e3-cdce4960aac6&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) by [Refinery29](https://time.com/author/refinery29/) ## Refinery29 Jan 26, 2015 4:00 PM UTC  Two girls chatting by cafe window Two girls chatting by cafe window Getty Images by [Refinery29](https://time.com/author/refinery29/) ## Refinery29 Jan 26, 2015 4:00 PM UTC Last September, [after I got fired](http://www.refinery29.com/getting-fired#slide) from what was painfully close to being my dream job, I was gripped by aimlessness, malaise, and more than a little self-loathing. I imagined myself jobless, penniless, and miserable for the rest of my days. Then, I decided to seize this less-than-shining, underemployed moment to pursue my dream of writing full-time (in my case, as a freelance culture, news, and lifestyle journalist). Though I was nervous about taking the leap into a profession that’s notoriously competitive and unlucrative, I felt ready to try something new: to work from home on projects of my choosing, without a Big Boss breathing down my neck. I’m lucky to be semi-successful at the freelance thing, because losing or eschewing a traditional job doesn’t always unfold so smoothly for everyone, millennials included. **MORE** [Lessons I Learned From Getting Fired](http://www.refinery29.com/getting-fired?utm%5Fsource=time&utm%5Fmedium=syndication&utm%5Fcampaign=related#slide) Traditional jobs can be hard to come by for millennials — who are shaping up to be the most [educated](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/millennials-become-most-educated-u-s-age-group-due-to-recession.html) generation in history (but not the most employed; in 2014, [9.1 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds were unemployed](http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/28/opinion/segal-millennials-struggle/)). While the job market is picking up for many, that uptick isn’t necessarily helping millennials, for whom job security has been rocky throughout most of their adult lives. As Andrew Hanson, research analyst at Georgetown University, [said back in July](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/40-of-unemployed-workers-are-millennials-2014-07-03), “Young people are the first to be let go by companies in a recession and the last to be let back in.” As of July 2014, millennials made up a whopping[ 40 percent of America’s jobless masses](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/40-of-unemployed-workers-are-millennials-2014-07-03) (that equates to 4.6 million people, in case you’re curious). As usual, the statistics for women lead to a more complicated narrative. For women 25 to 54, unemployment is 30%. The number of working women has climbed overall during the later part of the 20th century, but those numbers have been sinking since 2000, partially due to economic trends, but also to a recent rise in stay-at-home parenting. (Notably, in wealthier areas, like the Salt Lake City suburbs and the Upper East Side of New York City, rates of women working are lower than in other US regions.) Rates of female unemployment are also higher in more rural and poverty-stricken regions, of course, like the Deep South, Appalachia, Northern Michigan, and various locations in the middle of the country. (Education, or lack thereof, plays a major part.) **MORE** [Why Getting Pregnant Cost This Woman Her Paycheck](http://www.refinery29.com/2014/12/78865/pregnancy-rights-supreme-court-peggy-young?utm%5Fsource=time&utm%5Fmedium=syndication&utm%5Fcampaign=related) Plenty of American men are jobless, too (in November, [5.4 percent of men](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/empsit.pdf) over the age of 20). Unemployed guys, [reports _The New York Times_,](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/06/upshot/where-working-women-are-most-common.html?rref=upshot&smid=tw-upshotnyt&%5Fr=0&abt=0002&abg=1) work out less and feel that they have worse relationships with their families than when they were members of a workforce. Women, on the other hand, are “more likely to say that their health and their relationships with friends and family have improved since they stopped working.” Maybe that’s because, according to this [_New York Times_ interactive](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/06/upshot/how-nonemployed-americans-spend-their-weekdays-men-vs-women.html?%5Fr=0&abt=0002&abg=1) that documents the average daily activities of 147 unemployed men and women aged 25-54, females tend to spend a lot more time doing housework and “caring for others” than their unemployed dude counterparts; women spend a whopping six hours on both, while men spend less than three each. And though plenty of unemployed people spend a sizable part of their day job-hunting, plenty of others seem to, well, futz around. They tend to sleep more than their working peers (slightly more than an additional hour), and devote much more time to entertainment like TV and movies — especially the men. Out of the 65 people who spent more of their day watching movies and TV than doing anything else, 46 were men; only 19 were women. And both men and women sans jobs “spend about 1.5 times as much time socializing as the average employed person.” **MORE** [Why It’s So Hard To Make New Friends](http://www.refinery29.com/new-friends-difficult?utm%5Fsource=time&utm%5Fmedium=syndication&utm%5Fcampaign=related) The day-to-day lifestyles of the thousands of Americans eschewing traditional 9-5 workplaces — either by choice or necessity — look dramatically different from those with “normal” jobs, indeed. But as more millennials struggle to find and hold onto jobs in a competitive, overcrowded market, it seems likely that their everyday habits will be forced to evolve, whether that includes six hours of TV, socializing, traveling, care-taking or…something else altogether. _This_ [_article_](http://www.refinery29.com/2015/01/80392/nytimes-unemployment-data?utm%5Fsource=time&utm%5Fmedium=syndication&utm%5Fcampaign=main) _originally appeared on_ [_Refinery29.com_](http://www.refinery29.com/)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/"},"headline":"What Unemployed People Do With Their Time","datePublished":"2015-01-26T16:00:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:37.821Z","description":"While most of unemployed people spend a sizable part of their day job-hunting, plenty of others seem to, well, futz around","url":"https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/","keywords":["Living","society","Unemployment","millenials","Culture","career"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt582fcf72764f8183/69877b14f887dc2974e89a4e/169055570-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Refinery29","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/refinery29/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt582fcf72764f8183/69877b14f887dc2974e89a4e/169055570-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"girls-chatting-cafe","caption":"girls-chatting-cafe","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3676910/unemployed-time-spending/","name":"What Unemployed People Do With Their Time"}}]}] ```