Taking data from the American Time Use Survey conducted each year by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, it displays what Americans are doing when you pop in to check. Sleeping? Right now -- 2:32 p.m. Eastern time on a Wednesday afternoon -- 12.5 million of us are catching some winks. Almost 21 million of us are shopping, though not at Market Basket. 117 million of us are working (or, at least, at work).

Now you can know exactly what your fellow Americans are doing at any moment in time, thanks to a new data visualization developed by Retale.com.


Clicking through the demographic tabs at the bottom helps dispel some popular fallacies. Despite all the moaning about kids spending too much time in front of their screens, the population segment that has the highest percentage of people plopped in front of the TV is the elderly -- at 8 p.m., more than half of all people ages 75 or older are watching TV.

Retale says that a historical look at the survey shows that, despite the belief that life is getting busier and busier, the survey shows that Americans are sleeping more and working less than in 2003 -- by about 10 minutes per day.

Play around with the tool yourself and let us know what jumps out at you.

Bennie DiNardo can be reached at bennie.dinardo@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bdinardo.