Unpaid work and mental load in numbers

Every figure here carries the year it was measured and a link to the body that measured it. Both datasets are free to download, and the analysis of what the minutes miss is our own.

Data pulled 2026-09-05 free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0)
99

countries with comparable data on unpaid domestic and care work

0

of those countries where men do more of it than women

2.46×

median ratio of women's to men's unpaid work time

142

minutes a day: the median gap between women and men, or 864 hours a year

11

years: the median age of the most recent measurement per country

45 %

of the planning load in our task catalogue sits in tasks of 20 minutes or less

One definition, 99 countries

The UN Statistics Division collects indicator 5.4.1 — the share of the day spent on unpaid domestic chores and care work — under a single activity classification, which is what makes countries comparable at all. We pulled the whole series, kept the most recent year per country for the widest adult age group it reports, and converted the shares into minutes a day.

The shares are official figures. The gap in minutes and the ratio between women and men are our calculation from them. The table holds all 99 rows — search, sort and filter them by measurement vintage; the full file is linked underneath.

Sort
Women Men 26 of 99 countries shown
Time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, minutes per day, selected countries. Source: UN SDG indicator 5.4.1, series SL_DOM_TSPD.
Country Minutes a day Gap Ratio
Indiameasured 2024 · 15+ 32242 +280 7.67×
Türkiyemeasured 2015 · 15+ 27653 +223 5.21×
Mexicomeasured 2024 · 15+ 308122 +186 2.52×
Italymeasured 2014 · 15+ 287108 +179 2.66×
Greecemeasured 2014 · 15+ 261101 +160 2.58×
Japanmeasured 2021 · 15+ 21254 +158 3.93×
Spainmeasured 2010 · 20-74 273124 +149 2.20×
Hungarymeasured 2010 · 15+ 249115 +134 2.17×
Bulgariameasured 2023 · 15+ 262128 +134 2.05×
South Koreameasured 2024 · 15+ 18868 +120 2.76×
Polandmeasured 2023 · 15+ 281173 +108 1.62×
Austriameasured 2022 · 15+ 227124 +103 1.83×
Francemeasured 2010 · 15+ 227137 +90 1.66×
Belgiummeasured 2014 · 15+ 236149 +87 1.58×
Switzerlandmeasured 2020 · 15+ 249165 +84 1.51×
Netherlandsmeasured 2012 · 20-74 212133 +79 1.59×
United Statesmeasured 2023 · 15+ 222145 +77 1.53×
Australiameasured 2024 · 15+ 258182 +76 1.42×
Estoniameasured 2021 · 10+ 224149 +75 1.50×
Germanymeasured 2022 · 15+ 226152 +74 1.49×
Canadameasured 2023 · 15+ 237167 +70 1.42×
Denmarkmeasured 2009 · 20-74 225162 +63 1.39×
United Kingdommeasured 2022 · 15+ 230176 +54 1.31×
Finlandmeasured 2021 · 15+ 202155 +47 1.30×
Swedenmeasured 2011 · 15+ 231185 +46 1.25×
Norwaymeasured 2023 · 15+ 209166 +43 1.26×

Sorted by the size of the gap. Measurement years and age groups differ between rows — read the year before comparing two countries. unpaid-work-by-country.csv (99 countries)

Half of what gets quoted as “today” was measured a decade ago

Across the 99 countries the median measurement is 11 years old. For 54 of them nothing newer than 2015 exists, and only 35 have measured since 2020. Time-use surveys are expensive and run roughly once a decade, so a good part of the numbers circulating in articles about housework were collected before the smartphone reached every kitchen.

That is not a reason to ignore the data. It is a reason to print the year next to the number — which is why every row on this page carries one.

Vintage of the newest measurement

Select a band to filter the table above by measurement vintage.

The most recent national surveys

These are newer and more detailed than the UN series, and they are not comparable with each other: each defines its population, its activities and its unit differently. Read them one row at a time.

United States American Time Use Survey · measured 2025 Women2.8 h/day Men2.1 h/day

Household activities, on days the activity was done; 87 % of women and 75 % of men did any on an average day.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Germany Zeitverwendungserhebung 2022 · measured 2022 Women~30 h/week Men~21 h/week

Gender Care Gap 44.3 % — women do 44.3 % more unpaid work, a gap of 1 h 19 min a day. It was 52.4 % in 2012/13.

Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis)
Austria Zeitverwendungserhebung 2021/22 · measured 2022 Women4 h 19 min/day Men2 h 29 min/day

Unpaid work, adults under 65. Housework alone (age 10+): 3 h 07 min vs 1 h 54 min.

Statistik Austria
Switzerland SAKE, unpaid work module 2024 · measured 2024 Women36.5 h/week Men24.3 h/week

Ages 25–64. Women spend 62 % of their total working time unpaid, men 42 %.

Bundesamt für Statistik (BFS)
World ILO, Care work and care jobs · measured 2018 Women76.2 % of all hours Men23.8 % of all hours

16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work a day across 64 countries — the equivalent of 2 billion people working 8 hours unpaid.

International Labour Organization

Most recent national figures on unpaid work, by statistical office.

What the minutes don't measure

Every survey above measures one thing: time spent doing. None of them measures the part that runs before the doing — noticing the form is due, deciding what is for dinner, remembering the winter tyres. That work leaves no minutes in a diary, so it lands in no statistic.

Our task catalogue is one attempt to score it. It holds 97 household tasks, each with a duration, a frequency and three ratings from 1 to 5: mental difficulty, how much it costs if the task is skipped, and how hard it is to hand over. The ratings are ours, assigned when the catalogue was built rather than measured in households, and the whole file is downloadable — so the arithmetic below can be checked, and disagreed with.

0.29

Duration barely predicts mental difficulty

Duration barely predicts mental difficulty. Across the 97 tasks the rank correlation between the two is 0.29: a long task is only slightly heavier to think about than a short one.

-0.35

The heaviest thinking sits in the rarest tasks

The heaviest thinking sits in the rarest tasks. The correlation between how often a task recurs and how mentally difficult it is comes out at −0.35. Of the 17 tasks rated 4 or 5 for mental difficulty, 71 % happen twelve times a year or less — which a diary covering one or two days is structurally unlikely to catch.

29 % / 45 %

Short tasks carry disproportionate load

Short tasks carry disproportionate load. Tasks of 20 minutes or less account for 29 % of the catalogue's annual minutes but 45 % of its planning load.

Short tasks with the heaviest mental load

Tasks rated 4 or 5 for mental difficulty that take 45 minutes or less. Source: Family Fair Play task catalogue.
Task Minutes per run Times a year Mental difficulty Hard to hand over
Meal planning 20 52 5/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Managing the family calendar 20 52 5/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Communication with school (emails, messages, class teacher) 20 52 4/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Managing the family budget 20 52 4/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Morning wake-up and getting kids ready 30 365 4/5 Mental difficulty 3/5 Hard to hand over
Finding and enrolling in activities 30 12 4/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Paying bills (utilities, rent, internet…) 30 12 4/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over
Children's admin (forms, insurance, documents) 45 12 4/5 Mental difficulty 4/5 Hard to hand over

Every task with its ratings, and the arithmetic behind these figures: ffp-task-catalogue.csv (97 tasks)

Limits

What the figures on this page cannot do:

  • The UN series mixes measurement years from 2001 to 2025 and age groups from 10 and over to 20–74. Two rows share a definition, not a vintage or a population.
  • Shares of a 24-hour day come from diaries. Two things at once — watching a child while cooking — are usually recorded as one, and surveys handle such secondary activities differently.
  • All of it is recorded by sex, in two categories. Same-sex couples, single parents and households with more than two adults are invisible in the international series.
  • Our task catalogue is an expert-scored model, not a survey of households. It shows how household work is structured under our ratings; it is not evidence about any particular family.

How to cite this page

The two datasets and the analysis are free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution and a link (CC BY 4.0). The official statistics behind them belong to the bodies that published them and carry their own terms.

Family Fair Play (2026). Unpaid work and mental load in numbers. https://www.familyfairplay.com/en/mental-load-statistics.html

The gap in your own household

Averages describe countries. The split at your own table is a different question — and one you can answer in ten minutes.

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