I’ve been thinking about these numbers in light of this year’s celebration of Labor Day. According to the Department of Labor, the holiday is intended to celebrate the “social and economic achievements of American workers.” Which have, of course, been many. But most American workers don’t achieve great economic things until someone else creates a job. Who, exactly, is doing that?

In the minds of many (and I would be including our president in this sentence, despite some nice words to the contrary), we often think of job creation as some nebulous corporate decision. And so there is much urging of these nebulous powers that be to create jobs, even as levels of government and various do-gooders try to insert their claws into these decisions. They perceive this as some vast leveling of the playing field between huge corporations and individuals. And so you get health care reform. Reams of paperwork. Fees (it’s hard to claim states actually want us to create jobs when any new hire immediately incurs a workman’s comp and disability premium). Taxes — don’t pretend that payroll taxes don’t raise the costs of hiring people; all the increased unemployment insurance payments are going to have to be made up somehow. And campaigns to guarantee various work-life balance goodies. Most small business owners already wind up covering for their employees when they need to take off for illness, emergencies, etc. Even if that wrecks the business owner’s own work-life balance. But that doesn’t stop the campaigns for demonizing evil employers.

The crazy thing is, though, that these employers are not impersonal. The Kauffman Foundation finds that most new jobs are created by start-ups. These are people who make a decision to solve a problem in the marketplace. They often take on debt. They take on reams of paperwork. They take on oodles of regulations dreamed up by politicians who’ve never personally created a job in their lives. And yes, they hope to make money. But as they do, they create opportunities for other people.

All of this is hard work. It is easier not to do it. In a place like New York, where sometimes the city takes it upon itself to do crazy things like regulate how many words you can have on your store awning, I’m surprised that more business owners don’t make like Atlas, as the saying goes, and shrug. But many keep plugging away. For that, they deserve to be celebrated. This Labor Day, if politicians want more Americans to be involved in labor, then we should be celebrating the job creators. We need more people like them.

However, this will probably be my last New York anniversary celebrated in New York. Sometimes you do start wanting more privacy and space, and a lower cost of living, or at least the ability to send your kid to kindergarten without it being like applying to college all over again. And as people point out, you don’t actually go to the Met that often. Which is why I laughed out loud when someone sent me this link to an Onion article called 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live. On my New York anniversary! Now, if I could just figure out where we want to live instead…

But what if there’s more to the story? Some new data is showing that the question of why people earn more or less is quite nuanced. In some cases there is pretty blatant gender discrimination. In others, it involves questions of how we spend our 168 hours, with women doing pretty well when they want to.

So let’s look at the whole situation. I read a short story in the Wall Street Journal this morning highlighting research from Reach Advisors which found that, based on Census data, young single women earn more than their male peers in most U.S. cities. In general, they earned $1.08 to a comparable man’s dollar (that is, 8% more). In Atlanta, their wages were 121% the level of their male counterparts (they earned $1.21 to the dollar).

This is quite a large gap, and it reflects a few things — most importantly, that more women than men are going to and graduating from college. When women are young and single, they also appear to be going “full in” to the labor force. That is, they take high-paying, full-time jobs, without any worries that this will hurt their chances in the marriage market (and it won’t, as my friend Christine Whelan has documented in her book Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women, using Census data).

But, of course, as pundits will point out, women do not stay single and childless. Some 80% of us will have children. There is some evidence that mothers are treated differently at work, even in “big” jobs. Indeed, in “big” jobs, women in general may be discriminated against. Several years ago, I reviewed a book called Selling Women Short by Louise Marie Roth. She tracked people who earned MBAs between 1991 and 1993, and took jobs on Wall Street. Roughly 6-8 years into their careers, she compared their salaries and workweeks. She found that fathers earned $590,625. Mothers earned $314,357. Childless women earned $356,944. The fascinating part about those numbers is that childless women were actually working more hours per week than the fathers. This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of discrimination, and indeed Roth uncovered various ways that banks shunted women into groups that did not land the big bonuses. (For instance, assigning them to teams which served women-owned businesses. The idea was to make these female CEOs/founders feel more comfortable, which makes sense, but since women-owned businesses tend to be smaller and less capitalized, this hurt the Wall Street women’s earnings).

But this direction of the time gap — in which a big group of women were working more hours than men — is not the broad state of affairs. According to the American Time Use Survey, in families where both spouses work full time, moms spend 5.14 hours per day on work and work-related activities. Fathers spend 5.98 hours. This means that moms are working a 36 hour week, and fathers are working close to a 42 hour week. In other words, fathers are working about 17% more than comparable mothers. When you look at all women, the time-gap for full-time male and female workers is closer to 10%. But this is still roughly half the pay gap.

Women do, of course, work more at home. In couples with kids where mom and dad both work full time, moms spend just shy of 3 more hours on interactive childcare per week. They spend just shy of 5 more hours on household tasks. There are serious arguments to be made that caregiving should be valued more than it is (I’m not so sure about housework). But is that really something that employers should be leveling?

Unfortunately for those who want a quicker solution, I think that in general, this state of affairs will level as a result of millions of household conversations and negotiations. Many of these are already taking place. As I’ve written before, when I drop my 3-year-old off at school (it’s a full-time program, so pretty much 100% of the families are 2-career couples), I’m sometimes the only mom in the elevator with a group of dads. Just because you are the female half of the couple doesn’t mean you have to do the laundry. More critically, you can trade off nights of working late or going to networking functions.

But closing this gap also means that moms have to want to work more — and many simply don’t. If (according to a DailyWorth poll), the majority of moms who work full-time wish to work part-time, this suggests that most full-timers are not looking for ways to increase their hours to match comparable fathers’. Which means that, overall, the pay gap could be with us for a while.

While I know from The Happiness Project that this is supposed to improve my mood, I didn’t undertake this particular chore for that reason. Rather, our landlord (our next door neighbor) seems to have assumed that we planned to move in July when our lease was up. We somehow didn’t get around to that, which means that his plans to combine our apartment with his were put off for another year. As part of the trade off for extending the lease, given that we are basically living in what he thought would be his home right now, he plans to start the renovation while we are still here… by taking the closet from the master bedroom (and having it open into his apartment).

He bought us four large new wardrobes to house our stuff. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come out anywhere close on a square footage basis. It was a nice closet! We actually used it as the baby’s bedroom for the first 4 months of his life. So I have been getting rid of massive quantities of shoes, clothes, coats, etc.

Most of it I have been glad to see go. I am astounded at my ability to accumulate cheap clothes that are really nothing special. A shirt was on sale, so I bought it. Repeat that process two dozen, three dozen times and you have my wardrobe. I own a white blouse that I very clearly remember buying at a discount store four years ago, thinking it was a good deal. I have never worn it. I still can’t bring myself to get rid of it, I guess because I keep thinking a white blouse is useful. It probably is, but not taking up space in my closet. Socks and workout clothes are a particular beast because, well, you always need socks. Why would I get rid of a pair of perfectly good socks? Never mind that my husband stays so on top of the laundry that I really only need 8 pairs. I think I have three times that. Then there are the T-shirts I have kept for sentimental reasons — a souvenir of a sailing trip in Australia from college, or a tie-dyed one from high school. All of this takes up space, and I probably wouldn’t try to save it in a fire.

Well, so it goes. I’ve winnowed down a lot, and created an “A” wardrobe and a “B” wardrobe. The A one contains a nicely edited selection of clothes that I think best reflects how I’d like to appear. The B one contains everything else that I can’t quite part with yet. With any luck, I’ll just never open the B wardrobe door, and be able to donate most of the B stuff to charity when we move next July. Now that will be a good way to save time.

A generation ago, a college degree was the ticket to a comfortable, upper-middle class existence. We believe, as a society, that more education means more income, and in general this is still true. The unemployment rate for college educated people is much lower than for people with less education.

But the returns on a college education have been declining for some time, even as costs have skyrocketed. A college degree is no longer a guarantee of a comfortable existence. Why is this? Perhaps it is because more people are going to college — and we cannot all, alas, earn more than average.

But the American Enterprise Institute released an interesting report this month claiming that part of the problem may be how college students spend their time. According to various time diary studies analyzed by researchers Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, in 1961, students at 4-year colleges spent 24 hours per week studying. By 2003, this had fallen to 14 hours per week.

There could be many plausible explanations for this besides laziness. Perhaps students are working more to pay for school. Perhaps they have more family responsibilities. Perhaps, as the first in their families to go to college, they are facing other obstacles. Perhaps, as more Americans go to college, more people are attending schools that don’t require as much study. Perhaps we are majoring in topics that require less study, or perhaps technology has made learning more efficient.

The authors look at each of these explanations, and find that most don’t hold up. Students are working more, but even among students who are not employed, study hours have fallen. They have fallen among students whose fathers also went to college, and they have fallen within majors. They have fallen among students who attend the most selective colleges. While it is true that the Internet and word processing make writing papers easier, the bulk of the decline in study hours came prior to the 10 years before the 2003-2005 numbers. It really just appears that students are studying less.

Why? Given that students are paying so much more for college these days (in many cases shouldering staggering debts) you’d think they’d have more skin in the game. The authors posit that perhaps college has become a signaling device for employers — the fact that you got a degree is more important in the job market than your actual grades. You can work hard in high school to get in, and then coast after that. Perhaps grade inflation contributes to this as well. If you know you’ll get an A or a B in most classes, why put in more work, particularly if employers don’t care about your grades?

These explanations make sense, but there’s a problem with this trend because when you study less, you learn less. And the authors note that there’s evidence that when you study less, you earn less too. Which would explain why the returns on a college education are declining.

By Laura Vanderkam

Hard as it is to believe, Memorial Day was just over 12 weeks ago. There are 168 hours in a week. Now that the kids are going back to school, it’s a good time to ask this question: what did you do with the 2,016 (168 x 12) hours of summer?

Sure, you slept some. Grownups slept about 672 of them. Kids a bit more. You probably worked a lot of them too. But even if you worked 40 hours a week for all 12 weeks — 480 hours — that still left 864 waking, non-working summer hours. If you took a week or two off work, that would put you up over 900.

This is a lot of time. Do you know how you spent those 900 hours?

I’ve been pondering this as the first cool snap here on the East Coast hints at the weather to come. I remember the big events: a week at the beach in early August, a trip to visit family in the Midwest in July. But many of those 900 summer hours came in shorter spurts. They came as a lazy weekend day, or a gorgeous summer evening when it stays light up until bedtime.

This was going to be the summer I seized this time. In my book, 168 Hours, I reference an exercise created by career coach Caroline Ceniza-Levine, called the “List of 100 Dreams.” This is an unedited list of anything you might like to do or have in life. It’s a good way to start thinking about how you’d like to fill your time, because time management isn’t just about saving five minutes here and there. It’s about filling your weeks — even the small spaces — with activities that bring you and your loved ones joy.

And so, in June, I tried to create a List of 100 Summer Dreams. I tried to think through anything my family might like to include in our summer. Perhaps we would try a hike in a nearby state park? A family swimming class? Making crafts together? Picnic breakfasts?

Well, you know how this goes. Work gets busy. With a three-year-old and an 11-month-old you can make plans, but then sometimes they just want to play with cars. Which is fine, until the car-playing devolves into bickering which devolves into whining for Dora the Explorer. We made it to the zoo a few times. I watched fireworks on the beach one lovely summer night and saw my baby eat his first ice cream cone, which involved him throwing his head back in ecstasy as the ice cream dribbled down his double chin. But we never did have picnic breakfasts.

So it goes, I guess. I don’t believe in scheduling our lives (particularly our summers!) down to the minute. But we live in a distracted world. It is easy to lose our summer hours to television, web surfing, chores, errands and puttering. Using our time well is a process. Fortunately, each new week offers another 168 hours to try again — and each summer, another 2016.

Of course, few things are ever black and white, and social media inhabits that great gray area. I have had an active Twitter presence (@lvanderkam) for about 6 months. It is insanely addictive; I’d estimate that I check it several times a day. As someone who is trying to market a product (a book), I like the idea of being able to casually reach many people, without all the infrastructure involved in maintaining an email newsletter or (so retro!) an actual postal mailing list.

But is Twitter work? If I’m tracking my 168 hours, should it be work or leisure?

In the “work” category, I have a few data points. Twitter does drive some people to this blog, where they can learn more about me and my work. Twitter also enables me to scan lots of people in real time — for instance, when I needed to buy a ticket to BlogHer, which was sold out. I searched for people offering to sell a ticket, and (with some help from other folks too), scored one. BlogHer has already produced several media opportunities (of course, whether media leads to selling books is another matter… but…) It enables me to see pithy feedback from readers who might not contact me directly, because I can search for “168 Hours” or my name.

Reading Twitter may also sometimes count as work in a non self-promotional way. I’ve followed more than a few links myself to things that look interesting. Since I am constantly looking for story ideas, this gives me exposure to articles I might not have otherwise read. I am reminded, casually, when acquaintances have articles or books coming out, if I happen to see it.

And, of course, when I got an email saying Martha Stewart was following me on Twitter, that was pretty exciting.

But there are also several data points in the non-work category. For starters, despite the time and attention I have devoted (willingly! it’s addictive!) to Twitter over the past 6 months, this has had a fairly low payoff. Of the past 7000 visitors to this blog, 90 have come directly from Twitter. Granted, I only have about 650 followers. But several folks with far more impressive numbers (in the 5 figures) have tweeted or re-tweeted links to this blog. So we are talking hundreds of thousands of potential impressions leading to 90 click-throughs. Yikes. Not only that, many of these people have included my Twitter handle in their tweets. Sometimes, I get a few new followers out of that. But not many. My sense is that Twitter is a bit like workmen playing a radio as they’re doing renovations on the house next door to yours. Yeah, you can hear it, sort of. But you’re not paying attention.

Twitter veterans know this, so people pile on the tweets (like every 30 seconds) or try to be as shocking or grandiose as possible in order to grab you. On Twitter, every link is the Best Post Ever. Then people come up with strategies and products that organize tweets so you don’t have to see all this. All very fun. But I’m not sure most of it is work, if you generally think you should be earning more than minimum wage for the time invested.

Now, obviously, some people have gotten a great return on investment with Twitter. People do pay attention to celebrity tweets, and people can become celebrities via Twitter. S*it My Dad Says, the book based on the Twitter phenomenon, made the best-seller list. For me, though, I think I’m going to consider Twitter mostly in the leisure category for now.

I’m curious what other people have found.

• where the time really goes
• how to decide, as a family, what deserves your time and attention
• how to fill bits of time with bits of joy
• how to get everything else off your plate.

Space is limited! Reserve a spot by following this link. When you sign up, GoToMeeting will send you instructions on how to join the webinar from 12:30-1:30PM on Wednesday, Sept. 8. Basically, you just need a computer to watch the PowerPoint, and either a phone or your computer’s speakers to listen to the discussion and join in. By popular demand, I’ll also be doing another 168 Hours Challenge (where we all log our time) later in September, and will have more details about that at the webinar as well. So please tune in — I’m looking forward to this one.

Unfortunately, a reasonable number of people leaving comments were not here to talk about how we spend our time. They were here to sell cheap Rolex watches or Coach bags, provide links to various porn sites, or hawk other wares. We had a certain level of security, but when you have a real person typing these comments — even if it’s a real person in a spam factory in China — it’s impossible to stop on the front end. So I needed to approve all comments, but for whatever reason, My168Hours.com has been absolutely slammed in the past 2 months. I was getting more than 100 fake comments a day.

The problem? 3-5 were real. So I couldn’t just mass delete. I had to wade through all 100 spam comments to approve the real ones. Let’s just say this was not a great way to spend my 168 hours. So my webmaster has put a stricter level of security on this website, and now you need to have a WordPress account to comment.

In general, I like WordPress, so please do open an account! Of course, that’s not the only way to offer feedback. I encourage you to friend me on Facebook or become a fan of 168 Hours. All my posts are there as well where, in the curated internet, the spam is under control. You can follow me on Twitter (@lvanderkam) and we can continue the conversation there. Or just email me at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com. I really wish there was a better way to do this, and clearly some blogs have figured it out, but until I do, this is the way it will be. On the positive side, my inbox is more manageable these days!