sedentariness, work and seated position
Sedentariness and seated position
At a time when mechanization and digitization are making our daily lives easier, they are also encouraging a sedentary lifestyle, which is the fourth leading cause of premature death worldwide. Moreover, The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that people of all ages limit their sedentary time.
Have you ever found yourself sitting for hours at a time in front of your computer at work or school? This is a sedentary position, characterized by the maintenance of a prolonged sitting posture involving very little physical effort. As the graph below shows, prolonged sitting is not uncommon. It shows the amount of time spent sitting per day in 2015 in Switzerland, for people aged 18 to 75. Moreover, such a position is considered a physical strain, one of the most repeated in Switzerland.
work and seated position
Office work in particular is affected by this type of prolonged posture: three quarters of people in such jobs report sitting for at least 5.5 hours a day. Furthermore, in 2015, 59.8% of people spent more than a quarter of their working time in a seated position.
In Switzerland, this type of profession accounts for a large proportion of service-sector occupations: in 2023, 26.1% of working people were in an intellectual or scientific profession, 16.5% in an intermediate profession (including avariety of jobs from nursing to administratiion) and 8.4% in a managerial profession.
Altogether, these occupations, most of which are clerical in nature, will account for more than 50% of the working population in 2023.
