Houston is the most stressed out city in Texas, report finds

deep breaths

Houstonians are struggling the most with work-related stress, WalletHub found. Photo via Getty Images

Stress is an unavoidable part of life, but a new report by WalletHub shows Houston residents are far more stressed out than any other city in Texas.

Houston ranked No. 18 out of 182 of the largest U.S. cities based on work, financial, family-related, and health and safety stress, according to WalletHub's "Most & Least Stressed Cities in America (2024)" report. 39 relevant metrics were considered in the report, including each city's job security, the share of households behind on bills within the last 12 months, divorce rates, crime rates, among others.

Houston was ranked the most stressed out city in Texas, but it's still far less stressed than many other U.S. cities. Cleveland, Ohio took first place as the most stressed city in America, followed by Detroit, Michigan (No. 2), Baltimore, Maryland (No. 3), Memphis, Tennessee (No. 4), and Gulfport, Mississippi (No. 5).

Out of the four main categories, Houstonians are struggling the most with work-related stress, ranking No. 13 nationally. The report found Houston has the No. 1 highest traffic congestion rate out of all cities in the report. But at least Houston drivers are solidly average, as maintained by a separate Forbes study comparing the worst drivers in America.

Houston workers can rejoice that they live in a city with a generally high level of guaranteed employment, as the city ranked No. 151 in the job security comparison. The city ranked No. 16 nationwide in the metric for the highest average weekly hours worked.

Houston fared best in the financial stress category, coming in at No. 72 nationally, showing that Houstonians aren't as worried about pinching pennies when it comes to maintaining a good quality of life. The city ranked No. 39 in the comparison of highest poverty rates.

Here's how WalletHub quantified Houston's stress levels:

  • No. 17 – Health and safety stress rank (overall)
  • No. 36 – Family stress rank (overall)
  • No. 63 – Unemployment rates
  • No. 81 – Percentage of adults in fair/poor health
  • No. 95 – Divorce rate
  • No. 96 – Percentage of adults with inadequate sleep

WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe said in the report that living in particularly arduous cities can play a big role in how stressed a person is, especially when considering uncontrollable circumstances like family problems or work-related issues.

"Cities with high crime rates, weak economies, less effective public health and congested transportation systems naturally lead to elevated stress levels for residents," Happe said.

Happe advised that residents considering a move to a place like Houston should consider how the city's quality of life will impact their mental health, not just their financial wellbeing.

Other Texas cities that ranked among the top 100 most stressed cities in the U.S. are:

  • No. 20 – San Antonio
  • No. 38 – Laredo
  • No. 41 – Dallas
  • No. 47 – Corpus Christi
  • No. 61 – El Paso
  • No. 68 – Fort Worth
  • No. 71 – Brownsville
  • No. 75 – Arlington
  • No. 78 – Grand Prairie
  • No. 88 – Garland
The full report and its methodology can be found on wallethub.com

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Life is much more difficult when you're stressed out. Photo via Getty Images

Troubled Texans are the 10th most stressed out people in America, report finds

new report

There is a plethora of reasons to be stressed out in 2024. Among the list of grievances are budgeting woes, lapses in addressing racial inequity, a significant amount of drunk driving, and prohibitively high healthcare costs.

So it comes as no surprise that Texas was ranked the No. 10 most stressed state of 2024, according to the latest annual report from WalletHub. Texans' stress levels are only slightly better than they were in 2023, when the Lone Star State ranked No. 9.

The personal finance website compared all 50 states across 40 unique metrics to determine every state’s worries on certain issues, such as employment, finance, health, or family-related stress.

Here's how Texas performed in the major categories in the study:

  • No. 5 – Work-related stress
  • No. 8 – Family-related stress
  • No. 11 – Health- and safety-related stress
  • No. 23 – Money-related stress

Texas employees have the second-longest workweek in the nation, the report found, placing the state right behind Alaska and tied with Wyoming. Places like Houston, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio are a few of the most stressful U.S. cities for workers in 2024 (with several other Texas cities not far behind), clearly showing that there's much more work to be done to alleviate Texans' work-related stress.

Hardships with work may have an influence on Texans' ability to rest at night, as the report additionally found Texas fell behind into No. 23 for its share of adults that get adequate sleep.

Other Texas-sized stress factors like crime rates, housing affordability, health troubles, and poverty rates also put a damper on residents' well-beings. Texans have the fourth lowest credit scores in the nation, the ninth highest share of adults with fair or poor health, and the 11th highest number of residents living in poverty.

It's not just young and middle-aged adults who experience these worries, the report claimed.

"[E]very age group except people 65 and older reported being under more stress in 2023 than they were in 2019 before the pandemic," the report's author wrote.

WalletHub analyst Cassandra Happe suggested a few ways frazzled Texans can try to improve their stress levels, such as exercising, participating in hobbies, going on vacations — of course, in whatever capacity that is most accessible — and seeking help from a mental health professional.

"What many people don’t realize, though, is that changing location can also be a big stress reducer," Happe added. "For example, states that have lower crime rates, better health care, and better economies tend to have much less stressed residents."

Texans surely aren't envious of Louisiana, which traded places with Mississippi (No. 2) in 2024 to become the nation's No. 1 most stressed out state. Louisiana residents experience the third highest work- and health-and-safety-related stress, the fourth highest money-related stress, and the 10th highest family-related stress. Louisianans may want to try some breathing exercises in their spare time.

Texas residents can, however, be filled with jealousy over Minnesota (No. 50), which was crowned the least stressed out city in America. Maybe that's where Texans need to be taking vacations.

The overall top 10 most stressed states are:

  • No. 1 – Louisiana
  • No. 2 – Mississippi
  • No. 3 – Nevada
  • No. 4 – New Mexico
  • No. 5 – Arkansas
  • No. 6 – West Virginia
  • No. 7 – Alabama
  • No. 8 – Kentucky
  • No. 9 – Oklahoma
  • No. 10 – Texas
The full report and its methodology can be found on wallethub.com.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Work life in H-Town is hard. Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

Houston named No. 1 most stressful city for workers in U.S. in new report

by the numbers

Feeling totally stressed about work? Fellow Houstonians feel the pain.

In a new report from LLC.org, Houston was designated the most stressful city to work in. In fact, not one — but five — Texas cities made the top 10 most stressful cities for workers. Ouch.

LLC.org’s analysis looked at eight different categories such as average commute time, average weekly hours worked, income growth rate, and more. Each of the 170-plus cities researched in the report have a population of at least 150,000 people – which adds up to a lot of stressed out folks nationwide.

Houston earned its most stressful city ranking due to its nearly 53-minute average round trip daily commute, not to mention that one in three people in the city are on the road before 7 am every morning. To top it off, Houston’s percentage of workers without health insurance is 30.4 percent, which is significantly higher than the national average of 10.5 percent. (That’s a lot to be stressed about.)

Just after Houston is Arlington (No. 2) and Dallas (No. 3). While Arlington earns its second most stressful city rank for its 39.9 hour average daily work week, Dallas ranked ninth for the longest work week out of all cities in the analysis. The average Dallas laborer works 40.2 hours a week, which is greater than the 38.7 hour national average. At least Dallas’ average commute is a little lower than Houston and Arlington – at 51.4 minutes round trip.

Rounding out the top five are Memphis, Tennessee (No. 4) and Las Vegas, Nevada (No. 5) with Corpus Christi taking the No. 6 spot. Other Texas cities that made the list include Fort Worth (No. 8), San Antonio (No. 12), Garland (No. 13), Brownsville (No. 15), El Paso (No. 22) and Irving (No. 26).

The top 10 most stressful cities for workers are:

  • No. 1: Houston
  • No. 2: Arlington, Texas
  • No. 3: Dallas
  • No 4: Memphis, Tennessee
  • No. 5: Las Vegas
  • No. 6: Corpus Christi, Texas
  • No. 7: Fayetteville, North Carolina
  • No. 8: Fort Worth, Texas
  • No. 9: Moreno Valley, California
  • No. 10: Modesto, California
In an examination of the least stressful cities for workers, not a single Texas city made the top 10. Madison, Wisconsin earned the ranking of least stressful city to work in. It must be nice to have a 36.6-hour average workweek and short average round trip commute of 37.4 minutes. If only.The full report can be found at llc.org.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Rice Brain Institute awards seed grants for dementia, Alzheimer’s research

brain trust

The recently established Rice Brain Institute awarded 12 seed grants last month to support research on dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders.

The grants are part of the Rice DPRIT Seed Grant Program, which aims to help faculty members generate preliminary data, test and teams that would be supported under the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The DPRIT was approved last year to provide $3 billion in state funding over a 10-year span for research on dementia prevention and other neurological conditions. It will be modeled after the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), which has awarded nearly $4 billion in grants since 2008.

“DPRIT is a historic initiative with transformative impact potential and at Rice we are very well equipped to contribute to its mission and help make Texas a leader in brain health and innovation,” Behnaam Aazhang, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Neuroengineering Initiative and the RBI, said in a news release.

The Rice DPRIT Seed Grant Program is supported by the RBI and the Educational and Research Initiative for Collaborative Health (ENRICH) office at Rice. Most of the funding came from Rice's Office of Research, with a contribution from Rice's Amyloid Mechanism and Disease Center, which also launched last year.

A number of the teams include collaborators from Houston's Texas Medical Center, including Baylor College of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch and the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

The 12 teams are:

  • Keya Ghonasgi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice. Ghonasgi's research addresses the high risk of falls among people with different types of dementia and aims to develop a personalized, home-based fall-prevention approach using textile-integrated wearable sensors.
  • Luz Garcini, associate professor of psychological sciences at Rice, and Hannah Ballard, associate director of community and public health at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice. Garcini and Ballard's research looks at barriers and facilitators to early detection of Alzheimer’s disease in diverse, medically underserved urban communities and focuses on populations that experience late diagnosis, including Hispanic/Latino groups.
  • Lei Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, and Pablo Valdes, assistant professor of neurosurgery at UTMB. Li and Valdes' project develops a noninvasive, bedside imaging approach to monitor brain blood flow and oxygenation in patients recovering from stroke or brain surgery using photoacoustic imaging through a specialized transparent skull implant.
  • Cameron Glasscock, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Glasscock's project addresses repeat expansion disorders, such as Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy, and focuses on stopping DNA instability before repeats reach a disease-causing threshold.
  • Raudel Avila, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice. Avila's project focuses on everyday health factors such as nutrition, hydration and brain blood flow and how they influence brain aging long before symptoms of dementia appear.
  • Isaac Hilton, associate professor of bioengineering at Rice, and Laura Lavery, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Hilton and Lavery's project uses precise CRISPR-based gene regulation to target multiple genetic drivers of neuronal damage in Alzheimer’s.
  • Quanbing Mou, assistant professor of chemistry at Rice, and Qing-Long Miao, assistant professor of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine. Mou and Miao's project aims to develop a gene-regulation therapy for childhood absence epilepsy by restoring activity of the CACNA1A gene.
  • Momona Yamagami, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, and Christopher Fagundes, professor of psychological sciences at Rice. Yamagami and Fagundes' project addresses the physical and mental health challenges faced by spouses caring for partners with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and aims to develop algorithms to determine the optimal timing and frequency of supportive text messages.
  • Han Xiao, professor of chemistry at Rice. Xiao's project aims to improve the delivery of antibody therapies to the brain using a noninvasive, light-based approach that temporarily opens the blood–brain barrier.
  • Lan Luan, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice. Luan's project investigates how tiny blood-vessel injuries in the brain, known as microinfarcts, contribute to dementia.
  • Natasha Kirienko, associate professor of biosciences at Rice. Kirienko's project targets a shared cause of neurodegeneration, impaired mitochondrial cleanup, and aims to identify an existing antidepressant that could be repurposed to protect neurons in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
  • Harini Iyer, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice. Iyer's project will observe zebrafish to investigate how the brain’s primary immune cells become improperly activated in neurological disorders, leading to the loss of healthy neurons and cognitive impairment.

The RBI also named the first four projects to receive research awards through the Rice and TMC Neuro Collaboration Seed Grant Program in January. Read more about those projects here.

Report: These 10 jobs earn the biggest salary premiums in Texas

A move to Texas bolsters earnings for some, and a new SmartAsset study has revealed the top professions where the median annual earnings in the Lone Star State exceed the national median.

The report, "When it Pays to Work in Texas — and When It Doesn’t," published in April, analyzed over 700 occupations to determine which have the biggest "Texas premium" — meaning jobs where the price-adjusted median annual pay in Texas most exceeds the national median for the same occupation — and which jobs have the biggest “Texas penalty,” where the statewide median annual pay falls furthest below the national median. Salaries were sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and adjusted for regional price parity.

According to the report's findings, geoscientists have the biggest "Texas premium" and make a $159,903 median annual salary. Texas' salary for geoscientists is 61 percent higher than the national median for the same position (after adjusting for regional price parity).

"Texas’s large petroleum industry helps explain why employers in the state retain so many geoscientists," the report's author wrote. "In fact, the Lone Star State is home to more geoscientists than any other state except California."

There are more than 3,600 geoscientists working in Texas, SmartAsset said.

These are the remaining top 10 occupations with the biggest "Texas premiums" (salaries are price-adjusted):

  • No. 2 – Commercial pilots: $167,727 median Texas earnings; 37 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 3 – Sailors: $67,614 median Texas earnings; 36 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 4 – Aircraft structure assemblers: $83,519 median Texas earnings; 35 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 5 – Ship captains: $108,905 median Texas earnings; 27 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 6 – Nursing instructors (postsecondary): $100,484 median Texas earnings; 26 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 7 – Tax preparers: $63,321 median Texas earnings; 25 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 8 – Chemists: $104,241 median Texas earnings; 24 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 9 – Health instructors (postsecondary): $128,680 median Texas earnings; 22 percent higher than the national median
  • No. 10 – Engineering instructors (postsecondary): $129,030 median Texas earnings; 22 percent higher than the national media

The careers where Texas workers earn less

SmartAsset said an editor is the Texas profession where workers earn the furthest below the median for the same occupation elsewhere in the U.S. Not to be confused with film and video editors, BLS defines editors as those who "plan, coordinate, revise, or edit written material" and "may review proposals and drafts for possible publication."

The study found editors make a price-adjusted median wage of $29,710, which is 61 percent lower than the national median for the same position, and there are nearly 8,200 editors in Texas.

It's worth noting that the salaries for editors may be skewed by the fact that there are not major publications in rural areas of Texas, and other professions may also have financial deviations for similar reasons.

Several healthcare jobs also appear to have the worst penalties in Texas compared to elsewhere in the country. Home health aides are the second-worst paying professions in the state, making a median wage of $24,161.

"More home health aides work in Texas than in nearly any other state, with only California and New York employing more," the report said. "However, the more than 300,000 Texans in this occupation earn median annual pay that is about 31 percent below the national median, after adjusting for regional price parity.

SmartAsset clarified that pay penalties are not consistent "across the board" for other healthcare occupations in Texas.

"For physical therapy assistants, occupational therapy assistants, and postsecondary nursing instructors, Texas may be an especially strong place to work, with these occupations offering 'Texas premiums' of between 17 percent and 26 percent," the study said.

These are the remaining top 10 occupations where median annual earnings in Texas fall furthest below the national median for the same occupation:

  • No. 3 – Cardiovascular technicians: $49,382 median Texas earnings; 27 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 4 – Semiconductor processing technicians: $38,295 median Texas earnings; 25 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 5 – Tutors: $30,060 median Texas earnings; 25 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 6 – Control and valve installers: $56,496 median Texas earnings; 24 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 7 – Mental health social workers: $46,109 median Texas earnings; 23 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 8 – Clinical psychologists: $74,449 median Texas earnings; 22 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 9 – Producers/directors: $65,267 median Texas earnings; 22 percent lower than the national median
  • No. 10 – Interpreters/translators: $46,953 median Texas earnings; 21 percent lower than the national median

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston rises in 2026 ranking of best U.S. cities to start a business

Best for Biz

Houston has reaffirmed its commitment to a business-friendly environment and now ranks as the 26th best large U.S. city for starting a business in 2026. The city jumped up eight places after ranking 34th last year.

WalletHub's annual report compared 100 U.S. cities based on 19 relevant metrics across three key dimensions: business environment, access to resources, and costs. Factors that were analyzed include five-year business survival rates, job growth comparisons from 2020 and 2024, population growth of working-age individuals aged 16-64, office space affordability, and more.

Florida cities locked out the top five best places in America for starting a new business: Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Hialeah, and St. Petersburg.

Houston's business environment ranked as the 19th best in the country, and the city ranked 51st in the "business costs" category. However, the city lagged behind in the "access to resources" ranking, coming in at No. 72 overall. This category examined metrics such as Houston's working-age population growth, the share of college-educated individuals, financing accessibility, the prevalence of investors, venture investment amounts per capita, and more.

"From the Gold Rush and the Industrial Revolution to the Internet Age, periods of innovation have shaped our economy and driven major societal progress," the report's author wrote. "However, the past few years have been particularly challenging for business owners in the U.S., due to factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Great Resignation and high inflation."

Earlier this year, WalletHub declared Texas the third-best state for starting a business in 2026, and several Houston-area cities have seen robust growth after being recognized among the best career hotspots in the U.S. Entrepreneurial praise has also been extended to five local companies that were named the most innovative companies in the world, and six powerhouse female innovators that made Inc. Magazine's 2026 Female Founders 500 list.

Texas cities with strong environments for new businesses
Multiple cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex can claim bragging rights as the best Texas locales for starting a new business. Dallas ranked highest overall — appearing 11th nationally — and Irving landed a few spots behind in the 16th spot. Arlington (No. 23), Fort Worth (No. 30), Plano, (No. 35), and Garland (No. 65) followed behind.

Only six other Texas cities earned spots in the report: Austin (No. 24), Lubbock (No. 36), Corpus Christi (No. 39), San Antonio (No. 64), El Paso (No. 67), and Laredo (No. 76).

Austin tied with Boise, Idaho and Fresno, California for the highest average growth in the number of small businesses nationally, while Corpus Christi and Laredo topped a separate list of the U.S. cities with the most accessible financing.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

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