Pittsburgh area filled with not-so-hard workers, study says

Pittsburgh, which has prided itself for generations as having hard-working people who toiled in steel mills, factories, coal mines and manual labor jobs, apparently has softened over the years, based on a study conducted by WalletHub, a personal finance website.

The workers of the onetime Steel City were “outworked” by 103 of the nation’s top 116 cities, based on 11 key metrics. Those metrics included employment rate, average hours worked per week, the share of workers toiling at multiple jobs and the share of households where no adults work, WalletHub stated in the study released Monday.

Among the “indirect work factors” considered in the study were the average commute time to work, the average amount of leisure time each day and the annual volunteer hours per resident.

Based on those factors, Pittsburghers were even behind Philadelphia — the land of Tasty Cake — in this study. The city of Brotherly Love was rated 95 spots behind the leader in Anchorage, Alaska. San Francisco came in second, followed by the resort town of Virginia Beach, Va. Washington D.C., whose major economic driver is the government that is funded by taxpayers across the 50 states, came in 8th.

About the only thing Pittsburgh can brag about in this study is that workers in Cleveland are more slackers than Pittsburghers. Given the condition of the Browns — which have seldom worked hard since reentering the NFL in 1999 — it’s no surprise.

Detroit, which used to have a slew of autoworkers, came in dead last at 116. No wonder, because so many auto plants have moved out of the Motor City.

The study only looked at those workers residing within the city limits, and not the metropolitan area, said Diana Polk, a spokeswoman for WalletHub.