These Are The Best 10 Cities For Work-Life Balance

What do Amsterdam, Marseille and Alice Springs have in common? Their work-life balance is pretty on point, it would seem.

A new report suggests these cities have some of the shortest weekly working hours. Amsterdam in the Netherlands tops the list, with an average of 30.41 hours put in each week – that works out at four, 7.6-hour working days.

Marseille in France came in second place, with an average of 31.48 hours each week, followed by Alice Springs, in Australia, with 31.82 hours a week.

The report, by Holland & Barrett, looked at the average number of hours spent working in each city, using data sourced from the International Labour Organisation, to determine how much leisure time people are left with.

Other cities praised by the report for their shorter working hours included Vienna, Auckland, London, Brussels, Copenhagen, Oslo and Rome.

Holland & Barrett collected all this data so they could analyse which cities on the whole were best for upping your exposure to sunlight, and therefore getting a hearty dose of vitamin D.

Its ‘Sunshine Cities’ report looked at metrics such as how short the working day was (meaning more time to spend outside), how many hours of sunlight each city had, how many free outdoor attractions they had, and how many hours sleep people were getting on average.

In total, 210 cities around the world were analysed. Each of the metrics was awarded a weighted score and these were combined to give each city a score out of 100. Where data was not available for every metric, the city wasn’t counted.

Rome was crowned the vitamin D capital thanks to the Italian city seeing plenty of hours of sunshine each year, as well as being home to hundreds of free outdoor attractions and shorter working and sleeping hours (meaning more time to spend outdoors).