These 5 NSW spots have ranked among the 10 hardest-working cities in the country

Home to some of the country’s main tourist attractions, most beautiful beaches and magnificent natural wonders, NSW is known as a place of leisure. But it turns out, our state is also home to five of the ten most hard-working cities in the country. The surprising news? Despite our excruciating house prices and sky-high cost of living, Sydney isn’t one of them.

Researchers from global seasonal job platform, Snow Season Central, have ranked Australia’s 50 most populated cities from hardest-working to least. They scored all cities on a 100-point scale, where 80 points were dedicated to direct work factors (like average weekly work hours, employment rate, and unused vacation time) and the remaining 20 points were dedicated to indirect work factors (like commute time, jobs availability and amount of free time folks have per day).

After crunching the numbers, the seaside city of Warrnambool on Victoria’s rugged southwestern coast came out on top as Australia’s hardest-working city – with almost ten per cent of residents juggling multiple jobs, and 64 per cent leaving their annual leave untouched. But though it was a Victorian town that took the top spot, overall, NSW ranked as the country’s hardest-working state, with NSW cities dominating the top ten with five entries.

Topping the list of hard-grafting NSW locales is the charming Southern Highlands town of Bowral, with a total score of 76.61, ranking it as the fifth hardest-working city in the country. Next up, Bathurst came in at number six with a total score of 76.42. Further north, Tamworth ranked as the seventh hardest-working city in the country with a total score of 76.32. Dubbo and Orange came in ninth and tenth place respectively. 

While no capital cities cracked the top ten, the researchers created their own dedicated rankings to compare the big-name metropolises. Canberra took the crown as the hardest-working capital city in the nation, followed by Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. You can check out the full rankings here or see our snapshot below.

Here are the ten hardest-working cities in Australia:

1. Warrnambool, VIC
2. Kalgoorlie, WA
3. Alice Springs, NT
4. Warragul, VIC
5. Bowral, NSW
6. Bathurst, NSW
7. Tamworth, NSW
8. Albany, WA
9. Dubbo, NSW
10. Orange, NSW

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