The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that the average full-time worker has about 3.25 hours of leisure time available on weekdays – and since relaxation is part of our business model, this got us wondering: how is free time related to other important areas of life?
Using government data, we had a researcher crunch numbers for all fifty states and found the states with the most free time, or at least the least time working – and also learned that people in workaholic states tend to love their jobs and have better communities, but feel like they have less purpose and aren’t doing well financially.
Here are a few of the key findings, which we explain in greater detail later on:
We’ve got the full rankings at the bottom of the page and a complete breakdown of the methodology, but first, here are the top ten when it comes to having free time:
First, we needed to determine how much free time people in each state had. While the BLS periodically publishes a report on “leisure time” like the one we mentioned before, it comes in the form of a single set of questions and is all voluntary – we thought a better measurement would be to create a score for each state.
We used BLS and American Community Survey data to gauge how much time each week jobs were taking up, based off of time spent commuting and average hours in a work week
Our third factor was how much vacation time workers used, represented as a percentage of the total allowed vacation hours from the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
We ranked each state by these three elements and totaled the rankings; this gave us our “free time” scores and rankings, which you can see below.
It’s obvious that states with higher cost of living have more expensive housing, but it will probably surprise you to learn that states with the lowest housing costs work more hours than others.
And while the correlation wasn’t quite as strong, working more hours is also tied to higher unemployment and a worse feelings of financial well-being, as found in Gallup’s Well-Being Index.
The higher percentage of income spent on housing could be skewed by employees who work in cities with higher costs of living and more demanding professional careers, like a software engineer working through crunch time in Silicon Valley.
But this theory is complicated by the worse state of financial well-being being reported. More likely, it’s simply that states with worse economies also have higher rates of people working multiple part-time jobs or simply more hours in lower-paying jobs.
So, when you look at states that work the most you’ll also see the places where people are worried more about their jobs and paying the bills.
Project: Time Off claims that people who take vacations report higher levels of happiness than those using little to none of their time for travel. That may be, but it’s probably temporary.
There are negative correlations of varying degrees between taking more vacations and literallyevery factor we considered:
And of course, correlation isn’t causation and all of that, but the correlations between unemployment and financial well-being in high-vacationing states are strong enough to suggest that the Project: Time Off respondents’ reasons for not vacationing may have been valid:
Employees who were concerned that taking vacation would make them appear less dedicated or replaceable were dramatically less likely to use all their vacation time (61% leave time unused, compared to 52% overall). This held true for those who felt their workload was too heavy (57% to 52%) and no one else could do their job (56% to 52%).
States with shorter commutes see more job love, spend significantly lower portions of income on housing, have less unemployment, and have higher rates of community well-being. In states where people commute the least, there are very strong correlations between reports of loving one’s job and lower housing costs.
Chalk it up to the urban/suburban/rural cultural divide if you’d like, but states that have the lowest average commutes have an edge in most factors.
That said, long commuters tend to see report stronger feelings of purpose and financial well-being, potentially because they’re spending a significant amount of time getting to a job title and paycheck worth waiting for.
And in case you were wondering, job love was also correlated to every stress-reducing factor except longer commutes.
State
Free Time Rank
Commute Time
Hours Worked
Vacation Taken
Maine
1
23
9
1
Wisconsin
2
15
14
6
Alaska
3
6
25
5
Michigan
4
24
4
9
Utah
5
13
1
24
Ohio
6
20
9
14
Indiana
7
16
15
13
Iowa
8
7
23
21
Oregon
9
21
2
32
Arizona
10
31
23
3
Arkansas
11
10
40
7
North Dakota
12
1
45
12
Minnesota
13
18
7
33
Alabama
14
22
33
4
Vermont
15
14
5
42
Pennsylvania
16
39
15
8
Rhode Island
17
28
3
31
Missouri
18
19
22
22
Montana
19
3
15
46
Hawaii
20
38
25
2
Kentucky
21
17
24
25
Idaho
22
9
7
50
New Mexico
23
12
20
37
Tennessee
24
30
30
10
Washington
25
40
12
23
Connecticut
26
33
12
30
Florida
27
37
23
16
North Carolina
28
27
33
17
Illinois
29
45
15
18
Massachusetts
30
46
5
28
Colorado
31
32
30
20
Delaware
32
34
15
34
New Jersey
33
48
24
15
Kansas
34
8
36
43
Nebraska
35
4
40
44
South Carolina
36
29
23
38
Louisiana
37
35
47
11
South Dakota
38
2
43
48
California
39
44
11
39
Nevada
40
26
30
40
West Virginia
41
41
37
19
Wyoming
42
5
48
45
New York
43
50
23
27
Oklahoma
44
11
44
47
Georgia
45
42
39
26
Mississippi
46
25
42
41
Texas
47
36
45
29
New Hampshire
48
43
20
49
Maryland
49
49
33
35
Virginia
50
47
38
36
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Gluten Pioneer Says Food Labeled
‘Gluten Free’ Isn’t Always What You Think
Think you’re following a gluten-free diet? Not so fast.
A physician who is a pioneer in discovering and diagnosing the problems with gluten says many products touted as gluten-free today are not.
Dr. Kenneth Davin Fine, a gastroenterologist, and creator of Oro-Intestinal Fitness Products (www.finerhealth.com) and the Gluten/Food Sensitivity Diagnostic Laboratory EnteroLab.com brought gluten sensitivity to the public consciousness more than 20 years ago.
He says during those early years, gluten-sensitive patients usually experienced significant improvement in their health on a “gluten-free diet” but his patients have told him in recent years they have seen fewer improvements.
“Products can now be labeled ‘gluten free’ even if that food contains up to 20 parts per million of gluten,” Dr. Fine says. “While that doesn’t sound like a lot, a little gluten can go a long way in the reactions of the most active immune systems.”
Gluten is a protein found in the cereal grains wheat, barley, rye, and oats. It is a mixture of proteins and causes illness in people with either celiac disease, when the immune reactions to gluten damage the intestinal tissues visible on a biopsy, or more commonly non-celiac gluten sensitivity. This happens when symptoms and intestinal dysfunction are present in the absence of such changes on a biopsy.
Recent studies found that most (but not all) celiacs could eat gluten without resulting in damage to their small intestine. In his research, Dr. Fine has found that only about half of celiacs or non-celiac gluten sensitive patients can tolerate oats. He says “gluten-free oats” is a misnomer and may be responsible for symptoms experienced by people who think they are eating a gluten-free diet.
Dr. Fine believes the gluten sensitivity epidemic is caused by:
Recently, there also has been a significant increase in the mass marketing of products said to assist the gut microbiome in digesting food. The microbiome is the genetic material of all the microbes – bacteria, viruses, and fungi – in the body.
Dr. Fine says the best way to keep a healthy gut and microbiome is to eat the right foods. “Researchers have sometimes detected a different microbiome in obese individuals compared to non-obese individuals; although this has attempted to be the blame for the obesity, it cannot be ruled out that their microbiome is different because they make different, and perhaps less healthful food choices,” Dr. Fine says.
Other reasons for a poor microbiome are frequent exposure to antibiotics, the bactericidal chlorine added to public water, improper sleep, stress, and diets heavy in meat, cooked food (as opposed to raw vegetables/salads and fruit), and “junk food” and other sugar-laden foods. This is all typical of the modern lifestyle, which Fine says is a primary contributor to poor overall health.
“If you really want to achieve a healthy body, you must have a healthy intestine and intestinal flora,” Dr. Fine says. “And when it comes to immunologic food sensitivities, one must really be more restrictive of antigenic foods than was necessary years ago because of the progression of this immunologic epidemic.”
About Dr. Kenneth Davin Fine
Dr. Kenneth Davin Fine, the creator of Oro-Intestinal Fitness Products, (www.finerhealth.com), and founder of the patented gluten sensitivity testing method at EnteroLab.com is an academic gastroenterologist who has held staff positions at both Baylor University Medical Center and the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School. His medical research has appeared in prestigious medical journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Gastroenterology, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, and The American Journal of Gastroenterology. He has been professionally involved in patient care, medical research, teaching, directing clinical laboratories, nutritional pioneering and original health product and unique organic health food product development for almost 30 years.
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Last Hours to Take Advantage of Special Hotel Rate
Procrastinators: this is the last minute! (Or, last ten hours, to be more exact...) Plan your trip to CER's 25th Anniversary Summit + Gala Dinner today! CER's special event hotel rate is available until midnight tonight or 11:59pm (EST), October 1st. Book today and save!
For all registration or hotel related questions, please contact events@edreform.com or call 202-738-9221. Visit edreform.com for the full list of attendees, honorees and speakers, and stay tuned for further information about the event. Rooms are filling up fast—book yours today.
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Secretary Perdue Statement on United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement
(Washington, D.C. – October 1, 2018) – U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today issued the following statement regarding the announcement of a United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA):
“The great news of a new USMCA deal is important for our economy as a whole, including the agricultural sector, which counts Canada and Mexico in our top three trading partners. I have long said that I believe our country is located in the best neighborhood on Earth – North America – with valuable allies to our north and south. We have secured greater access to these vital markets and will maintain and improve the highly productive integrated agricultural relationship we have as nations. Notably, as one of the President’s top goals, this deal eliminates Canada’s unfair ‘Class 7’ milk pricing scheme, cracks open additional access to U.S. dairy into Canada, and imposes new disciplines on Canada’s supply management system. The agreement also preserves and expands critical access for U.S. poultry and egg producers and addresses Canada’s discriminatory wheat grading process to help U.S. wheat growers along the border become more competitive.
“As we celebrate this breakthrough, it is worth noting that there were many detractors who said it couldn’t be done. But this is further proof that President Trump’s trade negotiation strategy is working. A renewed USMCA, a new KORUS agreement, and the continued progress with Japan, can lead to further deals with other trading partners like the European Union and China. The dominoes are falling and it is good news for U.S. farmers. I thank President Trump and our U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Lighthizer for their perseverance, leadership, and hard work.”
FACT SHEETS
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