Affiliations: Bureau of Statistics, International Labour Office, CH-1211 GENEVE 22, Switzerland. E-mail: hoffmann@ilo.org/mata@ilo.org
Note: [1] The views expressed are those of the authors, who apologize for any errors and omissions which may remain even after the useful comments received from colleagues. Further comments and suggestions for improvements and corrections will be appreciated.
Note: [2] The type of activity describes what a person does: eating, typing, cleaning a building or a dwelling, driving a vehicle, digging
a dwell, managing a firm, cutting sugar cane, sewing clothes, making shoes, etc.; the context of an activity relates to where the activity is carried out, with whom and for what purpose; the scheduling of an activity describes the location in the day, week or year of the activity: whether during the day, in the evenings, nights or on weekends, etc.
Abstract: “Time” is often described as our most fundamental resource. We all have time to spend, and how we spend it will influence our wealth, welfare and happiness as well as that of persons close to us. How time is spent can be described by the types of activities carried out and by the length of time spent in them, as well as by the context in which they are done and their scheduling. Together “length” and “scheduling” represent the working time arrangements (WTAs) of a job, and a person's overall WTAs for a reference period is determined by the number of jobs held during that period as well as the WTAs for each of them. The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the methodological issues involved in developing statistics on WTAs in light of the tools and experiences already available. The two dimensions of WTAs, i.e., the “length” and “scheduling” of working time, together with information on their fixed or variable nature, can be combined in different ways to derive a vast number of different WTAs, some of which are described in this article. The advantages and problems of the standard data collection instruments for two complementary approaches to measuring the incidence of different WTAs are discussed, and the conclusions of two ILO commissioned reviews of national experiences are presented.
