Local Culture

Eau Claire Ranked Amongst Nation’s “Least-Stressed” Cities

Mike Paulus, photos by Andrea Paulseth |

Above: Relaxed locals.
Phoenix Park

Chillax, cats and kitties. Eau Claire popped up on yet another list of “best / worst / least / most fill-in-the-blank cites in America.” Take it as you will, but SmartAsset.com has named Eau Claire as the 5th least-stressed city in the United States. In fact, they say ...

Wisconsin wins. The only state to have two cities in our top ten was Wisconsin. Both Madison and Eau Claire cracked the top five, in fact. The two Badger State cities earned high marks for physical activity and hours slept, and had low negatives.

Madison was slotted in at 4th place, behind Duluth, MN (3rd); Iowa City, IA (2nd); and totally chill Boulder, CO (1st).

Northern states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Montana and North Dakota) generally fared well in the ranking. Columbia took 7th, Ann Arbor was 8th, and laidback Fargo reclined into 10th.

Phoenix Park
Above: Relaxed locals.

SmartAsset.com likes Eau Claire’s average commute time (under 15 minutes) and our average work-week of (35.4 hours). They say this gives our residents “plenty of time to kick back.” (Or ... look for a full time job?)

Madison is lauded for how much sleep they get down there, as well as its unemployment rate. Duluth was praised for having the “12th-shortest work-week of the 500 cities in our study.”

Stress Testing

SmartAsset says they used a cocktail of positive and negative factors in their rankings. Positive attributes included high rates of physical activity, number of “entertainment establishments,” and and a high average of sleep hours. For the negative, they measured things like hours of work per week, commute lengths, bankruptcy rate, divorce rate, and unemployment rate. They studied 500 cities of 67,500 or higher. You can learn more about the other top 25 cities in the study right here.

Do you feel like we live in a low-stress community? Go ahead and leave a comment ...