Top 10 Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance

A homeowner could have the most beautiful house in the world. But if they are working 60 hour weeks—including weekends—it hardly matters how elegant the marble kitchen island is or how perfect the designated reading nook is for curling up with the latest Grisham novel. Work beckons, and off they go. But with the right location and job, that can all change. Here are the top 10 cities that have the best work-life balances that allow residents time to enjoy their home and everything that comes with it: food, family, and lazy Sunday afternoons.

It’s difficult to pursue your passions and manage your various commitments given the time that they require, especially if they are not directly linked to your job. In an ideal world, though, you earn enough to sock away sufficient savings to enjoy your leisure activities without logging excessive hours at the office or on a punishing commute. Not all cities allow professionals to strike a happy medium, so SmartAsset decided to take a look at the cities with the best work-life balance.

To find the cities with the best work-life balance, we compared data for the 100 largest cities across the following 10 metrics: entertainment establishment density, dining establishment density, bar density, housing costs as a percentage of income, average number of weeks worked per year, average number of hours worked per week, average commute time, percentage of workers with commutes over an hour, unemployment rate and labor force participation rate. For details on our data sources and how we put all the information together to create our final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section below.

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