One of the only upsides of unemployment, you’d think, would be the free time that you’d have to do things that can be tough to squeeze into a normal work day — like going to the gym, or gardening, or just walking around the grocery store.
But at least with men, the extra time doesn’t translate into more activity. A study conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Aging and published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that even men employed in sedentary jobs ... get more daily physical activity than men unemployed for reasons other than poor health.
The notion is that the commute plays a role in the amount of physical activity you rack up in a day. Even men who had non-active jobs achieved a certain baseline of activity first thing in the morning that unemployed didn’t reach until noon, study co-author Dane Van Domelen, a post-baccalaureate fellow at the NIA, tells the Health Blog.
[...]
Our colleagues at the WSJ reported last year on Labor Department stats showing that as the unemployment rate rose, the average person aged 15 and up (employed, unemployed and retired) spent 17 fewer minutes at work every day. But that extra time went right to two of America’s greatest pastimes: TV (up 12 minutes) and sleep (up 6 minutes).
There was pretty much no change in the amount of time spent volunteering, participating in religious activities, exercising or participating in educational activities.
[Wall Street Journal]
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