PostgreSQL insert performance - why would it be so slow? - postgresql

Question

I've got a PostgreSQL database running inside a docker container on an AWS Linux instance. I've got some telemetry running, uploading records in batches of ten. A Python server inserts these records into the database. The table looks like this:
postgres=# \d raw_journey_data ;
Table "public.raw_journey_data"
Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default
--------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------+---------
email | character varying | | |
t | timestamp without time zone | | |
lat | numeric(20,18) | | |
lng | numeric(21,18) | | |
speed | numeric(21,18) | | |
There aren't that many rows in the table; about 36,000 presently. But committing the transactions that insert the data is taking about a minute each time:
postgres=# SELECT pid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, query
FROM pg_stat_activity
WHERE query != '<IDLE>' AND query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'
ORDER BY query_start desc;
pid | age | usename | query
-----+-----------------+----------+--------
30 | | |
32 | | postgres |
28 | | |
27 | | |
29 | | |
37 | 00:00:11.439313 | postgres | COMMIT
36 | 00:00:11.439565 | postgres | COMMIT
39 | 00:00:36.454011 | postgres | COMMIT
56 | 00:00:36.457828 | postgres | COMMIT
61 | 00:00:56.474446 | postgres | COMMIT
35 | 00:00:56.474647 | postgres | COMMIT
(11 rows)
The load average on the system's CPUs is zero and about half of the 4GB system RAM is available (as shown by free). So what causes the super-slow commits here?
The insertion is being done with SqlAlchemy:
db.session.execute(import_table.insert([
{
"email": current_user.email,
"t": row.t.ToDatetime(),
"lat": row.lat,
"lng": row.lng,
"speed": row.speed
}
for row in data.data
]))
Edit Update with the state column:
postgres=# SELECT pid, age(clock_timestamp(), query_start), usename, state, query
FROM pg_stat_activity
WHERE query NOT ILIKE '%pg_stat_activity%'
ORDER BY query_start desc;
pid | age | usename | state | query
-----+-----------------+----------+-------+--------
32 | | postgres | |
30 | | | |
28 | | | |
27 | | | |
29 | | | |
46 | 00:00:08.390177 | postgres | idle | COMMIT
49 | 00:00:08.390348 | postgres | idle | COMMIT
45 | 00:00:23.35249 | postgres | idle | COMMIT
(8 rows)