The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that the average full-time worker has about 3.25 hours of leisure time available on weekdays – and since relaxation is part of our business model, this got us wondering: how is free time related to other important areas of life?

Using government data, we had a researcher crunch numbers for all fifty states and found the states with the most free time, or at least the least time working – and also learned that people in workaholic states tend to love their jobs and have better communities, but feel like they have less purpose and aren’t doing well financially.

  • More average hours worked a week is correlated to worse economic outcomes.
  • States where workers take the most allowed vacation time tend to have higher rates of unemployment and lower senses of financial well-being.
  • States with shorter commute times love their jobs and have cheaper houses but the feel less of a sense of purpose

We’ve got the full rankings at the bottom of the page and a complete breakdown of the methodology, but first, here are the top ten when it comes to having free time:

  1. Maine
  2. Wisconsin
  3. Alaska
  4. Michigan
  5. Utah
  6. Ohio
  7. Indiana
  8. Iowa
  9. Oregon
  10. Arkansas

Our methodology

First, we needed to determine how much free time people in each state had. While the BLS periodically publishes a report on “leisure time” like the one we mentioned before, it comes in the form of a single set of questions and is all voluntary – we thought a better measurement would be to create a score for each state.

We used BLS and American Community Survey data to gauge how much time each week jobs were taking up, based off of time spent commuting and average hours in a work week.

Our third factor was how much vacation time workers used, represented as a percentage of the total allowed vacation hours from the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

We ranked each state by these three elements and totaled the rankings; this gave us our “free time” scores and rankings, which you can see below.

States with the least amount of free time

  1. Virginia
  2. Maryland
  3. New Hampshire
  4. Texas
  5. Mississippi
  6. Georgia
  7. Oklahoma
  8. New York
  9. Wyoming
  10. West Virginia

States where people work the most hours spend the most money on housing

It’s obvious that states with higher cost of living have more expensive housing, but it will probably surprise you to learn that states with the lowest housing costs work more hours than others.

And while the correlation wasn’t quite as strong, working more hours is also tied to higher unemployment and a worse feelings of financial well-being, as found in Gallup’s Well-Being Index.

The higher percentage of income spent on housing could be skewed by employees who work in cities with higher costs of living and more demanding professional careers, like a software engineer working through crunch time in Silicon Valley.

But this theory is complicated by the worse state of financial well-being being reported. More likely, it’s simply that states with worse economies also have higher rates of people working multiple part-time jobs or simply more hours in lower-paying jobs.

So, when you look at states that work the most you’ll also see the places where people are worried more about their jobs and paying the bills.

States that vacation the most don’t rank well in any other factors

Project: Time Off claims that people who take vacations report higher levels of happiness than those using little to none of their time for travel. That may be, but it’s probably temporary.

There are negative correlations of varying degrees between taking more vacations and literallyevery factor we considered:

And of course, correlation isn’t causation and all of that, but the correlations between unemployment and financial well-being in high-vacationing states are strong enough to suggest that the Project: Time Off respondents’ reasons for not vacationing may have been valid:

Employees who were concerned that taking vacation would make them appear less dedicated or replaceable were dramatically less likely to use all their vacation time (61% leave time unused, compared to 52% overall). This held true for those who felt their workload was too heavy (57% to 52%) and no one else could do their job (56% to 52%).

For shorter commute times, a positive correlation for most factors

States with shorter commutes see more job love, spend significantly lower portions of income on housing, have less unemployment, and have higher rates of community well-being. In states where people commute the least, there are very strong correlations between reports of loving one’s job and lower housing costs.

Chalk it up to the urban/suburban/rural cultural divide if you’d like, but states that have the lowest average commutes have an edge in most factors.

That said, long commuters tend to see report stronger feelings of purpose and financial well-being, potentially because they’re spending a significant amount of time getting to a job title and paycheck worth waiting for.

These are the most relaxed states in America

And in case you were wondering, job love was also correlated to every stress-reducing factor except longer commutes.

State Free Time Rank Commute Time Hours Worked Vacation Taken
Maine 1 23 9 1
Wisconsin 2 15 14 6
Alaska 3 6 25 5
Michigan 4 24 4 9
Utah 5 13 1 24
Ohio 6 20 9 14
Indiana 7 16 15 13
Iowa 8 7 23 21
Oregon 9 21 2 32
Arizona 10 31 23 3
Arkansas 11 10 40 7
North Dakota 12 1 45 12
Minnesota 13 18 7 33
Alabama 14 22 33 4
Vermont 15 14 5 42
Pennsylvania 16 39 15 8
Rhode Island 17 28 3 31
Missouri 18 19 22 22
Montana 19 3 15 46
Hawaii 20 38 25 2
Kentucky 21 17 24 25
Idaho 22 9 7 50
New Mexico 23 12 20 37
Tennessee 24 30 30 10
Washington 25 40 12 23
Connecticut 26 33 12 30
Florida 27 37 23 16
North Carolina 28 27 33 17
Illinois 29 45 15 18
Massachusetts 30 46 5 28
Colorado 31 32 30 20
Delaware 32 34 15 34
New Jersey 33 48 24 15
Kansas 34 8 36 43
Nebraska 35 4 40 44
South Carolina 36 29 23 38
Louisiana 37 35 47 11
South Dakota 38 2 43 48
California 39 44 11 39
Nevada 40 26 30 40
West Virginia 41 41 37 19
Wyoming 42 5 48 45
New York 43 50 23 27
Oklahoma 44 11 44 47
Georgia 45 42 39 26
Mississippi 46 25 42 41
Texas 47 36 45 29
New Hampshire 48 43 20 49
Maryland 49 49 33 35
Virginia 50 47 38 36