The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released their annual American Time Use study; it is full of interesting statistics on how Americans spend their time.  Fortunately for us, Kelly Jensen of Book Riot paged through the long report and columns of numbers for those relevant to us readers. 

 

She reports that Americans “reads close to 25% more than usual from May to December” of last year.  Two groups definitely upped their reading; those from 20 to 34 and those over 65.  Those over 75 spent an average of 57 minutes per day. 

 

“Black Americans increased their average reading time by a whopping 124%, to about 14.5 minutes per day.  White Americans averaged 22 minutes a day, which was an increase of 19%.”  Where gender was concerned men averaged a 30% increase to 18 minutes a day and women an 18% increase to 22 minutes per day.” 

 

One suggestion Kelly Jensen made was that working from home and the time spent not travelling or commuting as well as the cut back in time doing normal, mundane tasks like shopping and buying groceries during the pandemic also affected time available for reading. 

 

Interestingly, a great many readers particularly on Book Riot have discussed how the pandemic made it more difficult to read.  They could not concentrate; their attention spans were limited.  Scholars in the future are going to find all these accounts and statistics just right for some analysis about how corona virus affected everyday life. 

 

The article by Kelly Jensen is available online on Book Riot and she provides a link to the full report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.