Americans are not as lazy as many of the media outlets would like you to believe. After the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard new buzz words like “quiet-quitting”, “employee ghosting” and the “great resignation”. It led us to believe that Americans did not want to work anymore. Four years later, Americans are back to work and working hard.
To demonstrate this commitment to work, let’s look at a recent poll by WalletHub. The results of their poll found that Americans are in general averaging 1,799 hours of work per worker per year. And 48% of them leave unused vacation days on the table each year. But as the poll shows, not all states are working at the same pace.
The 10 Hardest-Working States in America
According to the poll, here are the 10 hardest working states in America.
One thing to notice right away is that outside of Alaska, Maryland and New Hampshire, the rest of the top 10 states – noted in darker color on the map – are located in the middle of the country. Depending on the state, the main industries in general of these states are agricultural (farming and ranching) and energy (oil, natural gas and coal).
Top Three States Ranking
Out of this list, let’s look at some facts from the top three to see why they ranked as they did.
North Dakota
One reason why North Dakota came in first is because of their employment rate – 98+%. The Roughrider State came in third in the country for having worked the most hours per week – 29.7. One other fact about the workers in this state is that 33.5% of them leave unused vacation time on the table meaning that almost 30% of them choose to work … even when they have vacation time left to use.
Alaska
The Last Frontier State came in second on this list for having the hardest working residents. On average Alaska workers work 41.6 hours per week. In fact, they were the only state working over a 40-hour week. They came in 12th as having the most unused vacation time left – 27.5%. They also scored 9th in the category of employees having more than one job.
Nebraska
One reason the Cornhusker State took third place was because in part, 7.4% of their workers have more than one job – the third highest in this category. They also came in the second lowest in the category of idle youth – those 18- to 24-year-olds that are not working, not in school. nor have any post-secondary education. Nebraska also likes helping others as they came in 5th in the highest number of volunteer hours worked per capita.
Methodology
To generate this list, WalletHub looked at 10key indicators in two main categories:
- Direct Work Factors
- Indirect Work Factors
A maximum of 80 points could be awarded in the Direct Work Factors which included:
- Average hours worked per week
- Employment rate
- Households where no adults work
- Unused vacation time
- Engaged workers
States could score up to 20 points in the indirect work factors which are:
- Average commute time
- Workers with multiple jobs
- Volunteer hours per resident
- Leisure time
In both cases, some categories were weighed more than others.
As a whole, as the data in the poll suggests, America is back to work. However, there are variances that seem dependent on the state’s location, primary industries supported and other state-dependent anomalies.
