If you’re dealing with work stress, burnout, or general anxiety in Seattle, you’re not alone. A new study from Compare the Market ranked U.S. cities after analyzing how often people searched online for stress- and anxiety-related terms. These included phrases like “work burnout,” “how to deal with work stress,” and “anxiety symptoms.” To identify the most anxious cities, the health insurance comparison experts examined search data related to both work-related stress and general anxiety.
Seattle ranked as the second city most affected by burnout, showing high levels of work-related anxiety among its workers. Over the past year, people in Seattle searched for “stress relief” more than 4,990 times, which was much higher than in many other cities. Seattle was outranked only by Atlanta, Georgia; and San Francisco followed close behind Seattle in the third spot.
Here’s the full ranking of the top 10 most stressed and anxious cities:
- Atlanta
- Seattle
- San Francisco
- Denver
- Boston
- Las Vegas
- Washington D.C.
- Baltimore
- Kansas City
- Portland
Curious about the methodology? For the analysis, researchers used four work-related anxiety search terms. Search volumes were measured per 100,000 residents. The data was then normalized on a scale from 0 to 1. If a city had no data for a term, it received a score of zero. These scores were added together to create a total work anxiety score out of 100, and cities were ranked from most to least anxious.
The work-related anxiety search terms were:
- “work burnout”
- “work depression”
- “work stress”
- “how to deal with work stress”
The general anxiety and stress search terms were:
- “anxiety symptoms”
- “chronic stress”
- “how to deal with anxiety”
- “how to manage anxiety”
- “stress relief”
- “stress symptoms”
If you need a way to unwind from work stress and burnout, take some time to relax in a waterfront sauna or go for a walk in one of Seattle’s beautiful city parks.