Enforced leisure: Time use and its well-being implications

Abstract

The article examines well-being and social implications of “enforced leisure” resulting from unemployment and underemployment. The first part of the article reviews statistical and research evidence about social and well-being implications of unemployment and underemployment in the context of “technological unemployment” and globalization. The second part examines well-being implications of enforced leisure (due to being unemployed or working part time because the respondent “could not find a full-time job”) based on time use and well-being data collected as part of 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Canadian General Social Surveys. Indicators used in the analyses of social and well-being correlates of “enforced leisure” include respondents’ time use, levels of perceived happiness, life satisfaction, satisfaction with work–family balance, satisfaction with the use of time, self-assessed health, perceived stress, and indices of social integration such as sense of belonging to the community, trusting people, or exposure to socially destabilizing behavior.