U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics historical data show that the labor-force participation rate for women ages 25–54 rose from 47.9% in 1968 to 64.0% in 1980.
A 2023 study using data from 27 countries found that people working from home saved an average of 72 minutes per work-from-home day in commuting time. Workers allocated about 40% of that saved time to their jobs and about 11% to caregiving.
BLS family-employment data summarized in the Home Economics research show that about 39% of married-couple households with children had both spouses in the paid labor force in 1970. By the 2020s, that share was about 65.4%.
The World Happiness Report, using U.S. time-use data, found that among Americans who lived with other people, 18% ate all of their meals alone on the previous day in 2023, compared with 12% in 2003.
BLS data show that labor-force participation among women age 55–64 rose from 41.3% in 1980 to 60.4% in 2024.
When large numbers of Americans began working from home in spring 2020, U.S. residential electricity use rose about 10%, according to an analysis of nationwide monthly utility data. In Texas, hourly smart-meter data showed home electricity
Global Workplace Analytics estimates that an employer saves about $11,000 per year for every employee who works remotely half of the time, through lower real-estate and facilities costs, higher productivity, and reduced turnover and absente
Administrative-burden research identifies three recurring costs imposed on people dealing with institutions: learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs.
Research on shadow work documents the transfer of tasks once performed by paid workers—such as checkout, ticketing, booking, banking transactions, customer-service troubleshooting, and data entry—onto customers through self-service and digi
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi found that the median two-income family of the early 2000s earned about 75% more, adjusted for inflation, than a single-income family of the early 1970s — largely because mothers had entered the paid
