Phoenix Falls Midway In New Work-Life Balance Report

PHOENIX, AZ — When it comes to maintaining a healthy balance between the office and home, Phoenix ranks smack-dab in the middle on a recent Best/Worst report. That’s according to a report by the staff at keyless security company Kisi, who tried to evaluate how well cities are implementing policies that enable residents to work smarter and enjoy their leisure time.

The analysis evaluated 40 large U.S. cities that were dubbed “in-demand” metropolitan areas. Among the factors that were considered: hours worked in a week, work arrival time, minimum vacation days offered and taken, unemployment rate, paid maternal and paternal leave, commute time, access to mental health care and LGBT-friendly policies. Safety, happiness, fitness and environmental scores were also considered.

With an overall score of 39.61 out of 100 possible points, Phoenix ranked number 20 in the nation. That’s just ahead of Tampa and behind Washington, D.C.

Here’s a truncated breakdown of just a couple of the metrics used to calculate Phoenix's scores:

Work intensity: Average hours worked/week are 41.9, with 13 percent working more than 48 hours/week.

Society and institutions: Social Spending (as a percentage of GDP) is 18.7 percent.

City livability: Leisure earned a score of 54.1 out of 100.

In the U.S., San Diego ranked the No. 1 city with an overall score of 54.82. The authors gave high marks to the California city for its society and institutions and city livability at 84.8 and 90.5, respectively. But like many American cities, those scores were dragged down by an 80.3 work intensity score, where a lower number is considered better because it indicates residents are less stressed.

“For the total score, a value of 100 does not mean a city is perfect in terms of work-life balance and has zero room for improvement,” the authors wrote. “Rather, it means that the city has the healthiest work-life balance out of all the cities in the index.”

An overall score of 1 means the city performs the poorest relative to the other cities in the study. The final score is calculated by adding up the weighted average scores of the indicators in the society and institutions and city livability factors, then subtracting the weighted average score of the factors in the work intensity category.

Here are the top 10 cities for work-life balance in America, according to the researchers:

1. San Diego, 54.82
2. Portland, OR, 51.52
3. San Francisco, 51.02
4. Minneapolis, MN, 49.86
5. New York, 49.5
6. Sacramento, CA, 47.44
7. Boston, 47.42
8. Omaha, NE, 47.01
9. Colorado Springs, CO, 45.66
10. Seattle, 45.66

Meanwhile, with a score of 29.65, Detroit ranked the poorest for work-life balance, according to the report, followed by Memphis, Tennessee and Atlanta.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.