Portsmouth among "UK's most burnt-out cities", new study finds

Portsmouth has been named among the UK's most burnt-out cities, ranking tenth in a new study examining the places where working patterns and wellbeing indicators suggest residents could be under the greatest pressure.

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The findings come as workers across the UK face the challenge of balancing demanding working weeks with commuting, overtime and the pressures of everyday life. The study examined a range of indicators to identify the cities where these pressures are most pronounced.

To find out where burnout is most prevalent, Manhattan Mental Health Counseling ranked UK cities across eight key metrics. These included average hours worked per week, searches for burnout-related terms, year-on-year salary growth, overtime hours, commuting time, reported anxiety levels, sickness absence rates and the percentage of people working beyond retirement age.

Portsmouth ranks tenth overall, with residents working an average of 36.9 hours per week. While this is slightly below the figures recorded in several of the cities above it, the combination of other factors puts Portsmouth firmly within the UK's top ten burnout hotspots.

Residents record 96.04 burnout-related searches per 10,000 people, suggesting a notable level of interest in burnout and related workplace pressures.

Salary growth stands at 7.8% year-on-year, while workers put in an average of 0.9 hours of paid overtime. The combination points to a city where wages are growing while some workers are also putting in additional hours beyond their usual working week.

The median commuting time is 16.2 minutes, considerably shorter than the 33-minute figure recorded in London. This suggests commuting is less of a contributor to Portsmouth's overall ranking than it is in the capital.

Reported anxiety levels stand at 3.38, while the city's sickness absence rate is 3.6%. This is one of the higher sickness absence figures among the cities near the top of the ranking, adding another factor to Portsmouth's overall position.

The study also found that 74.7% of people in Portsmouth work beyond the age of 65, one of the highest proportions recorded across the cities examined. Continued employment beyond traditional retirement age forms part of the study's wider measure of working-life pressure.

Portsmouth's tenth-place ranking puts it just behind Doncaster, while cities including Leeds, Coventry and Winchester rank lower overall. At the top of the table, Lichfield takes first place, followed by London and Derby.

The findings suggest Portsmouth's position is driven by a combination of working hours, burnout-related searches, anxiety, sickness absence and the high proportion of residents remaining in employment beyond 65. Although commuting times and overtime are relatively modest compared with some other cities, the wider set of indicators still places Portsmouth among the UK's biggest burnout hotspots.