LEXINGTON, Ky. — Researchers at CoworkingCafe revisited the data from a study last year in order to see which cities are best suited to foster a healthy work/life balance and mental health in 2024. For this second edition, they analyzed 100 cities, looking at how much people work, the accessibility of healthcare, affordability and green spaces, among others.
Here are a few highlights from our analysis:
- Lexington is the 11th best U.S. city for work/life balance and mental health in 2024 – it kept the same spot from last year’s ranking.
- The city still ranked well for its overall mental health score, even though it moved to the 20th spot from 17thplace. Notably, Lexington ranked 10th for the average work hours with 37.9 hrs/week.
- The city also ranked 12th for air quality and 21st for health insurance coverage with 93.1%.
- Commute time in Lexington was on the shorter side with 20.8 minutes, ranking 11th nationwide for this metric.
- Nationally, the Midwest dominated the top of the list for work/life balance and mental health with seven cities in the first 10.
There were other broad scale takeaways from the study.
The Midwest continues to dominate the top of the list for work/life balance and mental health with seven cities in the first 10, including Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minn., and Lincoln, Neb., taking the podium. Despite fluctuations in the Southeast, Raleigh, N.C. and Chesapeake, Va. held their top 10 positions.
Irvine and Fremont, Calif., stood out as the best places for good mental health and work/life balance within the Golden State. Pittsburgh was the only Northeastern city with a strong overall foundation for work/life balance.
Large coastal and Southern hubs fell behind in most aspects that contribute to overall work/life balance.
Mental well-being is recognized as a basic human right, and work/life balance is one of its fundamental pillars. Still, there’s a tug of war in the job market with businesses slamming the brakes on well-paid remote and hybrid jobs and employees prioritizing work/life balance above all by pointing at burnout as the main reason behind most resignations. The perfect balance might look different to each of us, but our surroundings set objectively measurable limits to what we can achieve — some places are simply better-suited to foster a healthy work/life balance than others.
Recognizing this diversity, CoworkingCafe set out to find the U.S. cities with the strongest foundations for professional fulfillment and personal well-being to coexist. First, it evaluated 100 cities with populations of 200,000 or more — with available data for all metrics analyzed — by gauging how much people work, the accessibility of free-time venues and healthcare, and the abundance of green spaces and air quality. Additionally, it considered incomes and their buying power to identify cities with a lower prevalence of financial burden as an anxiety-trigger.
Finally, researchers factored in the adoption rate of remote work to quantify this much-debated aspect of work culture, as well as commute times to get a feel of the effort it takes to earn a living on top of the nine-to-five.
