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Time use is one of the least discussed domains, but is among those that have the greatest impact on our everyday wellbeing as we strive to find balance in the many demands on our lives. And finding that balance is not just about our work. It concerns how much sleep we get, the time we spend commuting, our precious connections with friends and, as we see in other domains, the time we have for other fulfilling activities like being with our children, volunteering, and participating in leisure and culture activities. While individuals make choices, these choices are shaped or constrained by our economic, health, social, cultural, and family circumstances – the social environment in which we live, our workplace, our neighbourhood, and broader society.
Set against the backdrop of Saskatchewan’s sustained employment rate and its traditionally higher rates of holding multiple jobs, residents in the province actually reversed powerful trends to reclaim some of their time, and decisively so. Saskatchewan’s improvement of almost 15% in the domain over the decade from 2004 to 2014 was almost five times higher than Canada’s growth of 3.1% over the same period. Other important changes in time use trends have been evolving in Saskatchewan for much longer than that. Over the past 40 years, the percentage of dual-income Canadian families with children has nearly doubled from 36% in 1976 to 69% in 2015 as more women join the workforce and increasingly shift from part-time to fulltime hours. By 2015 in Saskatchewan, 3 in 4 families with at least one child under 16 years of age (74.1%) have both parents working, which is the highest percentage in Canada. |
While dual-earner families boost incomes, it also places more time pressure on families – especially women – to manage the household and to provide childcare or eldercare, or both. With women over-represented in occupations in the education, health-care, sales and service sectors, and underrepresented in management, they also have fewer options for regular workday hours or flexible arrangements – work options from which men have benefitted the most over the years. Consequently, women are more likely to sacrifice personal time with their friends and reduce time spent in physical activity and volunteering. This gender gap merits attention since it affects the wellbeing of over half the population.
Nevertheless, despite the positive overall trend in time use, by 2014, one in seven people in Saskatchewan (14.7%) are still feeling high levels of time pressure and less than a third (30.4%) are getting enough sleep. These patterns can negatively affect physical and mental health, relationships with others, and hinder full participation in all aspects of people’s lives. Finding ways to reduce stress at work and at home – and to rebalance time use in a more positive way – is beneficial to the individual and to society collectively. The effects of changing time use patterns – coupled with the continued declines in time spent with friends for social support, in formal volunteering, in providing support to others in need, and in interactions with our children – point to troubling outcomes for the wellbeing of all people, both within Saskatchewan and across Canada. |
