Time-Use

Understanding how young jobseekers spend their time highlights the main activities through which they might develop valuable human capital.

Time-use surveys worldwide aim to capture how individuals spend their day. The International Classification of Activities for Time Uses Statistics (ICATUS) is an international standard that provides a framework and classification for these time-use activities. The taxonomy encompasses a comprehensive set of activities, including those considered typically productive such as doing a job or working for pay, as well as unproductive activities like sleeping or watching television.

The ICATUS taxonomy offers a more inclusive approach to defining what is productive. It encompasses activities that fall outside the production boundary set by the System of National Accounts. These include services rendered without pay for own and others' final use, such as cleaning one’s own dwellings or cooking one’s own food. These activities are considered productive insofar that they have paid equivalents (for instance, a professional cleaner or a cook). Therefore, they engage human capital and enable human capital formation.

We identify four types of such activities in ICATUS, which we call “unseen” activities.

1. Unpaid domestic services for household and family members (Div. 3)

2. Unpaid caregiving services for household and family members (Div. 4)

3. Unpaid direct volunteering for other households (Div. 51)

4. Unpaid community- and organization-based volunteering (Div. 52)

Figure 1: Time Use of Youth (15-34 years old) in South Africa, Excluding Sleep

Highlighting this human capital in the South African first entails uncovering through which activities it might be formed. The South African time use survey from 2011 is the latest national wide source of data on how South Africans spend their time on the daily. When it comes to unseen activities, caring for someone in one’s household and maintaining one’s household takes up 19,9% of young South African’s time (15-34 years old). On the other hand, community service for non-household members such as volunteering (at Church, for instance) takes up 0,4% of young South Africans’ time.