by Chris Kolmar
America has been known as the land of opportunity for as long as I can remember. It’s the one place in the world where if you bare down and work your nose to the grindstone, you can make a better life for your family and yourself.
And while everyone in West Virginia works hard, there’s a certain part of the Mountain State that takes the Puritan work ethic to the extreme — the hardest working places in West Virginia.
Who’s the leader of this work around the clock ethos? That would be Cheat Lake which takes top honors for the hardest working place in West Virginia. People work so hard there they manage to make getting to work a job.
So what other places burn the midnight oil to bring home a large piece of bacon? You’re going to have to get to the office early and stay late on Fridays to beat out these places in West Virginia for a promotion:
- Cheat Lake
- Brookhaven
- Teays Valley
- Cross Lanes
- Bridgeport
- Sissonville
- Hurricane
- Charleston
- Charles Town
- South Charleston
How We Determined The Hardest Working Places In The Mountain State
Like all problems here at Zippia, we start with the data to answer the hard questions. Some might even consider us the hardest working data-crunchers this side of the Mississippi.
In this particular case, we went to the latest version of the American Community Survey looking for answers. As luck would have it, the Census Bureau just released the 2009-2014 5-Yr Estimate which would make this analysis the first of its kind with the new data.
After scrolling through what seemed like hundreds of criteria, we settled on this set for each State:
- Average hours worked
- Average commute time
- Workers per household (Employed labor force divided by the number households)
- Labor force participation rate
- Adults with a college degree
Our thinking went something along these lines: if you spent the many years getting a degree, are actively seeking employment, work a ton of hours when employed, and spend forever getting to work, you get the Zippia hardworking stamp of approval.
After we got the data for all 33 places in West Virginia, we ranked each place from 1 to 33 for each of the criteria with 1 being the “hardest working”.
Next, we averaged the rankings for each to create a hardworking index.
Finally, we crowned the place with the lowest hard working index the “Hardest Working Place In West Virginia.” At the end of the day, Cheat Lake had its hard work pay off.
Read the detailed chart here to learn a bit more about why each place ranked where it did.
