As if you did not know, Americans are working longer hours

Americans might be called many things — but lazy isn’t one of them.

A Labor Department survey released this week found that Americans spent even more time on the job last year. On average, Americans logged 7.8 hours on the days they worked last year, up from 7.6 hours in 2013, according to the American Time Use Survey.

Men worked an average of 8.12 hours a day, while women spent 7.27 hours working. The disparity is largely due to a greater likelihood of women working part time, the Labor Department said.

But while working men may have logged 51 minutes more on the job in 2014 than their female counterparts, the hours women worked grew at a faster rate, the survey found.

In 2013, men worked an average of 7.97 hours a day, compared with 7.08 hours for women.

Even though Americans spent a lot of time on the job, they also found more time to chill out and were watching TV an average of nearly 3 hours a day, according to the survey. They spent only about 30 minutes exercising.

None of this activity came at the expense of sleep. In fact, Americans slept more than they did anything else last year — an average of 8.8 hours a day.

And, in a nod to the ongoing gender wars, disparities remain in terms of who does the housework.

The survey found that on an average day, 20 percent of men did housework, like cleaning or laundry, compared with 49 percent of women. Men, however, were slightly more likely to do the yardwork: 11 percent of men did it on an average day compared with 8 percent of women.

When it came to children, Americans spent nearly 2 hours a day taking care of their kids — and women, on average, spent more time on it than men.

The results were based on an annual survey of more than 11,000 Americans age 15 and older who were asked how they spend their days.