Americans are spending more time at home and alone — and money shapes who can opt out

With our Covid-induced lockdowns now a moderately foggy memory for most, the last few years have turned out to be a continued normalization for many of the habits that defined the pandemic era.

Peloton bikes are now doubling as coat racks; the banana bread craze has cooled; Zoom’s share price is almost back to where it started; millions of people have gone back to clothes shopping in person; and companies like Del Monte are stuck with mountains of unsold canned fruit that’s no longer flying off the shelves.

But one seismic lifestyle change has proven far more permanent than any fitness fad or panic-buying spree — and it turns out to be part of a much longer trend that’s been building for decades: Americans are spending more time at home, and alone. And not everyone has the means to break that growing trend.

According to the annual American Time Use Survey (ATUS) — a self-reporting survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — an average American’s typical day still breaks down pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago. Roughly a third still goes to sleep, a fifth to leisure and sports, and, perhaps most surprising to anyone feeling burned out, just one-sixth to work. The rest goes to household chores, meals, and everything else. The survey does, of course, represent the average, with many retirees likely skewing the work figures down.

But if you look closer, the routines underneath tell a different story about how the collective American experience has changed.

Over the past two decades, Americans have gained about 30 minutes of sleep per day — now averaging over nine hours, more than ever — and spend roughly 11 more minutes on household activities such as cooking, cleaning, and pet care.

Where did those extra hours come from? It seems like we’ve carved them out of work commutes, mall trips, and in-person classes... activities that usually have us interacting with others out in public in some way.

Some of this shift can certainly be explained by demographic factors — America is an older country than it was in 2003, as birth rates have dropped. Nevertheless, on aggregate, the figures are pretty staggering for a nation of 340+ million people — and the sharp rise in the pandemic era suggests at least a decent amount of the shift is behavioral.

Indeed, in 2003, the average American spent 7.7 hours per day at home, according to the ATUS data compiled by IPUMS. By 2024, that rose to 9.1 hours, with the pandemic only accelerating the climb.

The distinction between home or not home excludes personal activities like sleeping and grooming, as the BLS doesn’t track exactly where those activities occur and who people are with — meaning the actual time at home could be even higher.

Home alone

The amount of time spent alone has followed a similar trajectory. Nearly seven hours a day were spent alone in 2024, up from 5.8 hours in 2010, when the survey began fully recording who people spend time with.

The simplest explanation is that people are doing more home-based things, especially around food. Since 2003, time spent on “food preparation and cleanup” has risen 26%, accounting for most of the increase in household activity time. And even when Americans aren’t cooking at home, eating out has turned inward: 75% of US restaurant traffic now happens off-premises via drive-thru or delivery, according to the National Restaurant Association. Hours spent on interior cleaning and caring for household pets have also ticked up.

But what’s more striking is how time once spent outside or with others has steadily moved in the opposite direction.

The rise of remote work and online classes accounts for part of the increase, with the share of working and studying hours spent at home both up by double digits from 2003 to 2024.

Yet some of the biggest shifts have come in unexpected corners of life. Religious activities now take place at home far more often, up 26 percentage points in at-home time and up 15 percentage points in time spent alone. Pew Research finds that nearly a quarter of US adults watch religious services online or on TV, again a potential hangover from the Covid days, when millions of church services turned to Zoom and other video conferencing tools.

Banking has also become a more solitary, screen-based errand. Even exercise, once a reason to leave the house and suffer and sweat alongside others, is now something we increasingly do alone in our living rooms: 42% of workout hours today are spent alone, 1.5x the share in 2003, while home-based exercise time also edged up.

The great indoors

As more of our daily lives have moved home and online, the same shift is reshaping how we unwind. Since 2003, time spent socializing and communicating — from hanging out with family and friends to hosting events — has fallen 24%, while travel time is down 26%.

Reading time for pleasure has also dropped 22% — with 40% fewer adults doing so — while attendance at arts and entertainment events has been cut in half.

Many of those lost hours in physical experiences have migrated to screens: time spent playing games has more than doubled, while computer use for leisure is up over 50%. And of course, the vast majority of those are spent at home, and alone.

But not everyone is experiencing the shift in the same way. As evidence for the K-shaped economy — where some groups thrive while others struggle — becomes harder to ignore, income is proving to be a strong differentiator.

In fact, households earning under $35,000 now spend about 10 hours a day at home, almost an hour and a half longer than those earning $150,000 or more. The pattern holds for time spent alone, too, with a two-hour daily gap between the lowest- and highest-income groups.

Time is money

Because most solitary time happens at home, the divide really comes down to what’s keeping lower-income Americans indoors — while higher earners are more often out of the house.

Taken together, wealthier Americans aren’t just spending less time at home; they’re more likely to pay their way out of it, with restaurant meals instead of cooking, pilates classes instead of home workouts, or washer-dryer combos instead of hours tied up in chores.

For the very wealthiest, that logic even goes further: according to a recent survey by Long Angle, nearly two-thirds of multimillionaires now outsource housekeeping, while about half pay for gardening services and two-fifths employ nannies.

Of course, time at home and alone isn’t inherently negative — as researchers note that, for many, solitude can be valued as a way to rest, think, or create. But when more of your day is taken up by unpaid chores and low-cost, home-bound leisure, that retreat indoors starts to look less like a choice.