The only way to get me to five hours of leisure time is to include eating, getting dressed, etc. in that category...
but when you're tenured, FL, that will move up to 24 hours.
Not just eating and hygiene - I'd have to throw in commuting as well. Five hours a day. On what planet?
Oh, unless you took the whole weekend as leisure and averaged it across the week. (IMHO - doing laundry or getting my oil changed does *not* leisure make.)
My guess is that 3.7 hours of work is our clue that leisure activities can be pursued at the workplace.
I considered that too. I don't think that's how they coded, but I'm not positive (PDF).
This is averaged over all days, saturdays, sundays and holidays included. A person with an 8 hour a day, five days a week job averages about 5.25 hours of work a day if he gets two weeks of vacation a year. You would end up with an average of 3.7 hours work a day if your population contained about 30% non-working people and 70% 8 hour a day, 5 days a week working people. Which seems about right: the employment to population ratio is a bit over 60%. Heavy overtime is probably compensated for by part-time workers.
This is not the modal day, which most of the reaction has assumed; it is the mean day.