The best city for career balance: Oslo. Dubai works the most.
Us:
The best city for career balance: Oslo. The hardest working? Dubai. This is according to a survey published on Wednesday by mobile access technology company Kisi, which looks at factors such as work intensity and city livability, as well as quality healthcare, affordable living and adequate leisure time. Although an average worker in Helsinki – number three on the list for work-life balance – takes a full month’s paid leave each year, for example, in Los Angeles the ideal is only one week.
For many, the epidemic is a time to reconsider priorities and make big leaps – such as moving to a new city. And as the labor market continues to heat up, plans to return to office across the industry have failed. Employees have resisted – tasting the flexibility offered by remote work – and many are ready for the job if their company forces them to work privately. Companies like Airbnb Inc. are promising a permanent home-based policy to lure candidates into the increasingly fierce competition for talent. City leaders will have to compete on a large scale as workers seek to capitalize on new dynamics and use the opportunity to expand their tax base and boost their economy.
In this context, some financial and corporate hubs, which have long been economically strong, have poor rankings. New York City dropped in the rankings, to 59th out of 100 cities, down from 38th in the previous year and 21st in the year before the epidemic hit in 2019. London, although ranked significantly higher, also declined – from 27 in 2022 to 20 in the previous year and 12 in 2019.
Firefighters may want to consider Amsterdam, Buenos Aires or Sydney instead, where less than 10 percent of the population works overtime, according to the survey. Those who nurture their five-minute morning commute from bed to the living room may want to think of Singapore, Washington DC, or Austin, where the maximum percentage of work can be done remotely within 50 percent.
Casey studied 51 U.S. metro regions and 49 major world cities across more than 130 data points – such as work intensity, extra work rate to measure rights and well-being of residents, healthcare access and safety metrics.
“Recent years have examined support structures for workers around the world,” said Bernhard Mehl, CEO of Kissi. “The ongoing pressure and disruption caused by the epidemic came after the war in Ukraine, which has contributed to the global instability that will be felt for the next few years.”
