For many of us, lunch break involves sitting at our desk, balancing a salad in one hand while using the other to scroll Facebook. Actually leaving the office to grab a bite is a luxury most industries have long left behind. But a new survey finds that while a lunch hour is hardly ever actually an hour, there are some careers in which workers get more time than others.
Fooda recently surveyed 500 American workers to see how long a lunch break they typically take, what they eat, and what exactly they do while they're away from their desks. And while fewer and fewer workers really walk away for a true lunch hour, some industries seem to encourage longer lunches than others.
For example, workers in the media and communications field take an average lunch break of 58 minutes each day. Insurance employees enjoy a slightly shorter, 53-minute lunch, while workers in legal servers break off for about 50 minutes. Workers in construction, healthcare, and food and beverage services, however, report the shortest lunch breaks overall—all less than 41 minutes, with food and beverage workers taking just 30 minutes of time to themselves.
The survey also shows that around 90 percent of all workers, regardless of industry, buy their lunches at least one time per week, although those in the industries with the shortest lunch breaks are most likely to do so. (Just 18 percent of people reported buying lunch from cafeterias, which means most buyers actually leave the office on their breaks.)
But even if you leave for lunch, you're not necessarily relaxing in the cozy corner café. The survey also showed that 89 percent of people say they've run errands on their lunch hour—and 55 percent cop to running errands regularly during this time. Avoid a career in business and finance, legal services, and technology if you actually want to eat on your big (or small) break.
