Philadelphia Cracks the Top 5 List of Most Stressed Cities
If you are a Philadelphian and are feeling stressed, that makes sense. According to a Wallet Hub study on most and least stressed cities, Philadelphia cracks the top 5 most stressed. The study consisted of 182 cities that included the top 150 most populated in the United States, and at least 2 of the most populated cities in each state. The folks over at Wallet Hub took a few things into account in order to get a score for each city. Work stress, which includes, hours, job security, traffic, average commute time, etc. Financial stress, family stress, and health and safety stress.
Philadelphians can attribute some of their work stress to the fact that commuting to work sucks I-95 has been under some sort of construction for my entire life (I’m 35), then it collapsed due to a fire causing even more travel issues (credit to those workers, the governor, etc getting that thing reopened in 2 weeks.) The Schuylkill is 4 lanes between a cliff and a river with no where to expand. It could be 2 am on a Wednesday and you might hit stand-still traffic.
We know the safety issue part of the health and safety ranking probably has the city in the top 2 without any health issues. Those rankings were determined using crime rate, community well-being, inadequate sleep, adults diagnosed with depression. All the fun things you want to think about.
Let’s take a peak at how Philadelphia came in across those 4 rankings.
Work stress: 8th. Traveling on I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway 2x per day is all the work stress one person needs.
Financial stress: 9th.
Family stress: 50th. If your family has a relative that is a Cowboys fan, your stress ranking is #1 from late July until January, or whenever the cowboys seasonal collapse happens. Joy!
Health and Safety Stress: 11th.
The rankings give Philadelphia a total score of 55.29. Only 7.33 points from the number 1 position! Something to strive for. Philadelphia’s population does dwarf the 4 cities in front by 1 million people. I don’t know if that’s a good thing for us, but it’s definitely bad for Birmingham, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland. For the full list you can go here.