1.1. How would you expect the time use of the unemployed to differ in a boom time? During the recession of 2008–2009, aggregate market work hours in the United States decreased substantially. A recent paper uses interesting new survey data to explore what the unemployed population did with these hours lost to the formal market.

What would an economist expect to see change in time use for someone newly unemployed in a recession? First, we might expect people to spend some time looking for new jobs. Aguiar and his co-authors find that between 2 percent and 6 percent of the lost market hours go to job search. But clearly there are diminishing returns to job search, especially in a recession when new job opportunities are limited. What else did the survey reveal about time allocation?