The secret to achieving work-life balance
It’s about age and gender… again!
How’s your search for work-life balance going?
If you’re like most Canadians, you might be getting a glimpse at balance, at least some of the time. Only 35 percent of Canadians say they often feel they can find the right balance between work, family and leisure, but 70 percent say they can find that balance at least sometimes. Only 22 percent say they can seldom or never find the right balance.
(These latest results are from the Survey on Employment and Skills – a project jointly led by the Environics Institute, the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Future Skills Centre.)
Interestingly, the answers to this question have remained stable over the past three years, despite the ups and downs of the pandemic (the Survey on Employment and Skills was launched in 2020, which means we don’t have results from prior to the pandemic).
Who among us is the most likely to feel that things are in balance? The answer is simple: older people, most of whom are no longer working. Only about one in four adults age 18 to 49 say they often feel they can find the right balance between work, family and leisure, but that proportion doubles to one in two for those age 50 and older. Similarly, retired persons (52%) are the most likely to say that things are often in balance, while students (17%) are the least likely to say so; people who are employed are in between (34%).
In short, the secret to finding work-life balance seems to be to stop working. This may not be an encouraging message for those of us at the start or in the middle of our careers, but it’s great news if you’re 64.
And, yes, gender also matters. Men (39%) are somewhat more likely than women (31%) to say they often feel they can find the right balance between work, family and leisure. The proportions that seldom or never find the right balance are 18 percent for men and 26 percent for women.
You might guess that this is related to the distribution of parenting responsibilities, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Among those age 25 to 54, women are less likely than men to say they often can find a balance, regardless of whether or not they have children. And among women in that age group, those with children in the home are just as likely as those with no children to say they can often find the right balance.
Finally, a look at both age and gender together shows that the situation is particularly challenging for younger women. Among the combined age and gender groupings, the one least likely to say they can often find the right balance in their lives is women under the age of 35. Two in five (39%) women between 18 and 34 say they can seldom or never find the right balance.
This finding echoes several others related to well-being that we’ve been tracking, including results related to anxiety and mental health (see our previous report from this survey here, and our recent studies of social capital here and here). All of these suggest that younger women are more stressed than both their younger male counterparts, and older men and women.
Click here to read an earlier report on work-life balance from the Survey on Employment and Skills.
The data in this post are from the sixth wave of the Survey on Employment and Skills. This survey is conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Future Skills Centre. The sixth wave of the study consists of a survey of 5,968 Canadians age 18 and over, conducted between October 13 and November 23, 2023, in all provinces and territories. It was conducted both online (in the provinces) and by telephone (in the territories). The author is solely responsible for any errors of presentation or interpretation.
The Survey on Employment and Skills is funded primarily by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre / Le sondage sur l’emploi et les compétences est financé principalement par le Centre des Compétences futures du gouvernement du Canada.
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