This City Has the Happiest Workers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 23, 10:50AM EDT

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This City Has the Happiest Workers — © YinYang / iStock via Getty Images

What makes people happy about where they work? A new study from Lensa claims that the factors include unused vacation days, average weekly hours worked, annual wages and a measure called “happiness levels.” The analysis does not entirely make sense because unused vacation days usually indicate people are working unusually hard.

Lensa’s “America’s Happiest Workforces” looks at states with the most and least happy workers. It uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau, WalletHub and the U.S. Travel Association. The report covers America’s 30 largest cities based on population. The researchers who prepared the study wrote: “Being happy at work is hugely important, not just for your own personal wellbeing, but also to ensure that you keep motivated and productive at work.”

Cities were rated on a scale of 1 to 100.

Minneapolis ranked first among the cities listed. Among the reasons were the 8.0 million annual vacation days that have not been used, 37.6 average weekly hours worked, a median annual wage of $38,808 and a happiness score of 65.98/100. This gave it a total score of 80.27. Seattle had 8.5 million annual vacation days not used, 39.3 average weekly hours worked and a median annual wage of $59,835. Its total happiness score was 64.74/100. The high compensation number may due to the several large tech companies in the city. Seattle’s total score was 77.10.
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Dallas was at the bottom of the scale with an overall score of 42.70. It had 19.4 million annual vacation days unused, and the average weekly hours worked were 40.5 (the highest among the cities). The median annual wage was $34,479, and the happiness score was 53.3/100.

These are the 10 cities with the happiest workers:

Minneapolis (80.27)
Seattle (77.10)
Portland (76.76)
San Diego (75.94)
San Francisco (73.83)
Sacramento (73.69)
Boston (70.47)
Cincinnati (68.94)
Pittsburgh (68.56)
Charlotte (63.38)

Click here to see which are the best jobs in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.