United States model
Official inputs.
Local clocks.
The USA page is a model-based “right now” estimate. It does not observe individuals and it does not shrink the global estimate to the U.S. share of world population.
Core formula
USA activity estimate = Σ (ATUS 15+ eligible population × time-zone population share × interpolated ATUS probability at that zone’s local time)
The calculation runs separately for Eastern, Central, Mountain, Arizona, Pacific, Alaska and Hawaii, then sums the seven results.
Official sources in V1
- Hourly activity probabilities — 2025 annual averages.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey Table A-3
Released/last modified 25 June 2026; retrieved 16 August 2026. - ATUS calculation and weighting methodology.
BLS Handbook of Methods — ATUS calculation - ATUS population-universe count.
BLS Unpaid Eldercare 2023–2024, Table 1
272,126,000 people: the published 2023–2024 average civilian noninstitutional population age 15+ used as the model denominator. - National population.
U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts
341,784,857 residents on 1 July 2025, Vintage 2025. - State population weights.
Census NST-EST2025-ALLDATA CSV
State resident populations on 1 July 2025.
Population universe
ATUS represents the U.S. civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and older. The ten activity curves are therefore multiplied by 272,126,000—not by the entire U.S. population. The full Census population appears only as a separate context statistic.
The denominator is not silently updated. The implementation records that the direct ATUS-universe count is a 2023–2024 average while the activity curve is from 2025. These are the most recent official inputs selected for their specific roles.
Time-zone weighting
Census 2025 state populations were grouped by the state’s majority civil time zone: Eastern 47.3542%, Central 29.1965%, Mountain 4.5175%, Arizona 2.2306%, Pacific 16.0663%, Alaska 0.2157% and Hawaii 0.4192%. The same shares distribute the ATUS-eligible denominator.
Every group uses an IANA time-zone identifier—such as America/New_York or America/Los_Angeles—so daylight saving time comes from the browser’s time-zone database rather than fixed UTC offsets. Arizona and Hawaii remain separate because their civil-time behavior differs.
Known approximation: multi-zone states are assigned to their majority time zone. A future county-level release can improve this without changing the model interface.
Hourly interpolation
ATUS Table A-3 reports a percentage at each whole hour. Between two hours the model uses linear interpolation. If an activity is 12.5% at 09:00 and 9.8% at 10:00, the 09:30 probability is 11.15%. The 23:00 to 00:00 boundary wraps continuously.
The display recalculates every five seconds, but there is no random noise. Two users evaluating the same timestamp with the same source version receive the same result.
Activities and confidence
V1 includes ten direct ATUS mappings: Sleeping, Working, Eating & Drinking, Watching TV, Exercising / Sports, Shopping & Services, Household Activities, Educational Activities, Socializing & Communicating and Caring for Household Children.
“High” means the activity has a direct published hourly row and a strong official population basis. It does not mean the displayed headcount is exact. ATUS is a sample survey and the national-time-zone layer adds modelling assumptions.
Weekdays, weekends and working
V1 uses the all-days 2025 annual-average Table A-3 curves because that official table provides the required time-of-day snapshots. It does not fabricate separate weekday or weekend shapes. The data structure can accept day-type curves later.
The Working counter uses the direct ATUS “Working” row. Current Population Survey employment data is not applied in V1 because combining a CPS scale with the ATUS population universe requires a carefully reviewed denominator and calibration method. An ATUS-only model is more transparent than a questionable hybrid.
What is not included
Births and deaths “today” are not shown in V1. Official annual rates can support a rate-based estimate, but one U.S. “today” boundary is ambiguous across six major civil time zones and the result would not be a directly observed live count. This can be added later with an explicit day convention.
No country-specific activity pages are published yet. Routes such as /usa/sleeping are reserved for future pages only if they can contain genuinely useful, unique content.
2025 ATUS limitation
BLS notes that ATUS data collection stopped during the October–November 2025 federal shutdown. The published estimates were weighted to represent the missing period, and BLS says the annual estimates may have been affected. HowManyRightNow uses the official table as published and records this limitation instead of attempting an undocumented correction.
Meaning of “right now”
“Right now” means the model evaluates a published typical-day probability at the actual local clock in each U.S. time-zone group. It is a statistical estimate of what would normally be happening at this moment—not surveillance, a census of current behavior or a historical observation.