Durham One of Best Towns for Work-Life Balance: Report

Ever since we were little kids, we’ve been searching for balance — even if it was just on a balance beam. As adults, the stakes are a bit higher — the goal many strive for is a healthy work-life balance.

The team at Zippia used data from the Census Department’s most recent American Community Survey to identify the places in Connecticut with the best work-life balance and Durham is one of them.

The website staff said they use state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to understand career paths for professionals across all industries.

Their goal is to empower people with the information and tools needed to achieve career aspirations.

A Work-Life Balance

Those who have achieved a healthy work-life balance have two common traits, Zippia staff said: Happiness and satisfaction.

And how did they obtain happiness and satisfaction? According to Zippia, this is the criteria:

• Commute Time (Shorter is better)
• Hours worked per week (Shorter is better)
• Size of household (Higher is better)
• Things to do per capita (Higher is better)
• Unemployment Rate (Lower is better)
• Poverty Rate (Lower is better)

“When it comes down to it, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is really all about maintaining an appropriate level of happiness,” staff wrote. “Because that’s the goal of the end day, finding the right level of work that still allows you to enjoy life.”

Durham ranked as the 4th best place to live if a work-life balance is important to you. According to Zippia, the average hours worked per week is 38.5.

Social Life

“It’s also important that a place offers things to do and that people that want to work can actually work,” according to Zippia. “For that reason, we included the raw count of things to do for a city based on Yelp data, the unemployment rate, and people living above the poverty line.”

The average rank across all criteria was calculated and the places with the overall lowest scores received the title of “Place with the Best Work-Life Balance in Connecticut.” Click here to read the full report from Zippia.

The Top 10 List

• 10. Newington
• 9. Trumbull
• 8. West Simsbury
• 7. Pemberwick
• 6. Weatogue
• 5. West Hartford
• 4. Durham
• 3. Newtown
• 2. Watertown
• 1. North Haven

Durham residents, do you have a good-work life balance? What’s your secret?

Photo by Peter Gene, via flickr creative commons