least stressful/most stressful american cities

Gee, it depends on what stresses you out. I love Boston and I don't find it stressful, but I bet other people would. People could say the same about New York or really anywhere.

According to the "Sperling Stress Index" which is comprised of nine different factors associated with stress: unemployment rate, divorce rate, commute time, violent and property crime rates, suicide rate, alcohol consumption, self-reported "poor mental health", and number of cloudy days, the following are the most stressful cities:
Tacoma, WA - Highest divorce rates in the country and one of the highest unemployment rates. It's cloudy much of the time, and the suicide and property crime rates are high.
Miami, FL - Highest violent crime rate in the study and one of the highest property crime rates. Long commute time, a high unemployment rate, and a high rate of divorce.
New Orleans - A high violent crime rate and a high unemployment rate. There's also a significant number of suicides and divorces.
Las Vegas, NV - Highest suicide and divorce rates in the study, and a great deal of alcohol use. Residents of Las Vegas have a great number of days experiencing poor mental health.
New York, NY - Longest commute in the country, the hustle and bustle can really stress people out. Unemployment is high and so is violent crime.

Least Stressful Cities:
Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY and
Harrisburg-Lebanon-Carlisle, PA - Lowest unemployment rates in the country. In fact, both areas score well in many categories- low divorce rates, short average commute times, a low overall crime rate, and low rates of suicide.
Orange County, CA - Little crime, low unemployment, and a whole lot of sunshine. Suicide rate is one of the lowest.
Nassau-Suffolk, NY - Lowest violent and property crime rates in the country. The divorce and suicide rates are also among the lowest in the country, indicating a safe and stable place to live.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN - Low unemployment rate and a low violent crime rate. Suicide rate is low and the stress scores are generally favorable across the board.

For the complete listing http://www.bestplaces.net/stress/stress_study3.asp


By the way jespah- Boston was way down on the list - number 77 out of 100.

LA seemed most stressful to me. I couldn't bear to live there, first, because of the earthquakes but also, I'd be miserable if I didn't have a home in the Hollywood Hills. Couldn't stand to be so close and yet, so far away from all of that fabulousness.

Thanks, Linkat!

Hmm, this explains why my folks are so relaxed (they live in Nassau-Suffolk, NY). :-D

least streeful jobs/most stressful jobs
What are the top 20 least stressful jobs and the most stressful jobs in the United States?

This is rather strange. Nassau, and the western part of Suffolk are bedroom communities of NYC. That's why New York has the longest commute!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (based on the average number of days workers spent away from their jobs recovering from neurotic reactions to job stress) - the top ten stressful jobs:

1. Office clerk
2. Lawyer
3. Restaurant or hotel manager
4. Ticket agent
5. Secretary
6. Claims investigator
7. Messenger
8. Bookkeeper
9. Truck driver
10. Cashier

According to the Jobs Rated Almanac (rates in terms of low stress, high compensation, lots of autonomy, tremendous hiring demand and several other key criteria), the five most stressful jobs are:
1. President of the United States
2. Firefighter
3. Senior corporate executive
4. Race car driver
5. Taxi driver
The five least stressful jobs, according to the Jobs Rated Almanac, are:
1. Medical records technician
2. Janitor
3. Forklift operator
4. Musical instrument repairer
5. Florist

Can you tell I love statistics?

True Phoenix - I read the entire article and it does go on to explain that even though residents of Nassau may have long commutes all the other factors are so low that it is considered low stress. The article goes into more detail than what I included - I tried to only show the highlights.

Eek, I've had 4 of the stressful jobs in your top ten list (1, 2, 5 and 6).

Tacoma ain't stressful; it's just poor and drunk.

Stress level of Austin Texas?
Is Austin Texas one of the least stressful cities in Texas to live in? How effective is public transportation in the area?
I would like to hear stories, especially from actors who have relocated there from the east coast.

I have to go back to work, but will have fun responding to this..
back later.

Linkat

You're amazing ... <grins>

On Tacoma, when I visited A2K friends in the Seattle area, we went through Tacoma a bit, and it looked fine to me. Of course, I am from Venice. As I remember, one of them works there. And isn't Dale Chiluly's museum there?

I was born in LA, lived in west la off and on as a child, and we moved back there when I was thirteen; that was problematic because my father was in and out of work, and when he was in work it was quite well paying, and when off, of course not paying at all, and as a only child teen who lived far away from the school relatives had enrolled me in, I was quite out of it. But once I started working at sixteen, I can say, looking back, that I started to connect.

I know a lot about the negs of LA. My exhub, who I can describe as a friend now, although that is complicated, was raised a couple of blocks from both the Watts riots, as they were known far and wide, if not everywhere, at the time, and the later mess ablow at Florence and Normandie. I do mean a couple of blocks, like two. When I first met him, a white boy theater mfa student, he always watched his back.
He was hostile to places I was used to, like the country market on 26th Street... where he saw money walking,
not in the way of Rodeo Drive, but sort of suburban money.
(He got over that, in a way, another story.)

Over the decades I know lots of parts of LA and lots of people throughout, and frankly love it anew as a mature adult. But it is hard to get ahold of, sort of no there there.

I remember when we lived in Chicago and NYC when I was 8-13. I always had a sense that I didn't quite belong, even though in Evanston, where we lived north of Chicago, I had what passed for the most normal years of my young life, and I was included in the neighborhood kid thing. A formative experience for me, I guess I spent those years sort of amazed at the busy neigborhood childhood life, after not knowing many other children before that, except in school.

So when we moved back to LA, I had a sense of inevitability.
It was a less structured place, but perhaps because I spent early years there, I felt an association verging on identification.

Later, much later, as an adult I thrived in LA; I don't think of it at all as shallow as commentators seem to; I see it as rich, though perhaps rich by virtue of many thin layers.

I was also attracted to northern california as well as the south I lived in, and there was no point in it, while my parents were direly alive, or then my husband's were, or while he needed to be in So. California for work.

So I didn't move away for decades, but finally did. Now I live quite a lot north. So? I still am from there, still am happy when I get back there. I don't have to live there, exactly, it is just that my personal range has grown and I have moved to another end of it.

It's a huge metropolitan area. It sort of kills me to hear people just rate it blotto, as in, have they looked around?

Actually ossobuco, I have family that lives in Tacoma. They have been recently doing a lot of work to clean up the city and as a result the Tacoma aroma is getting less offensive. I notice that the smell is not as bad as in past years. I also believe that unemployment has decreased recently too. But they still have the largest divorce rate and highest amount of cloudy days. Maybe there rating of most stressful city helped push city officials to improve Tacoma.

nimh - gee thanks!

In Seattle, I think. But Tacoma can claim him, since Seattle seems to have claimed Jimi Hendrix (a Tacoma native).



What if I have looked around and my strong northern California roots won't let me rate it anything else? (It's a bit like the Giants/Dodgers rivalry since the teams moved west: Giants fans care a lot, Dodgers fans barely notice it.)

That was how it was moving from NYC to Chicago... I didn't hear much about Chicago when we were in NY. Did hear about NY when in Chicago. Well, that was a long time ago, don't know how it is now.

I still think Chihuly's is in Tacoma, am going to look it up. (Am prolly wrong..)

Aha, it's not a museum entirely about him, but I think he is heavily featured.
Anyway, here's a link, it looks neat:
Glass Museum, Tacoma

Yeah, I was thinking of that, too. Chicago's whole "second city" schtick.



I'd thought you meant Chihuly's working studio in Seattle:
Chihuly Studio
1111 NW 50th Street
Seattle, WA 98107-5120

...which has a gorgeous entryway...



I used to live about two blocks away, and never went inside but walked my dogs around there all the time.

Some of Chihuly's work is growing on me, have to admit I have spent a lot of time not interested in it.