Bakersfield and Kern County have a way of showing up on all the wrong lists: worst air, highest rates of urban poor, highest unemployment, not to mention obesity and teen pregnancy. So how did we miss out on being one of the nation's "unhappiest cities?" Speaking for myself, there sure seems to be a lot of anger out there, and we do have an unemployment rate hovering around 12 percent, along with a county adult illiteracy rate approaching 25 percent. Maybe we're poor and happy, but I suppose it's good this is a list we didn't make. So here they are, as reported by BusinessWeek (read the entire report here), the nation's unhappiest cities:
1) Portland (pictured, courtesy of BWeek)
2) St. Louis
3) New Orleans
4) Detroit
5) Cleveland
6) Jacksonville, Fla.
7) Las Vegas
8) Nashville
9) Cincinnati
10) Atlanta
11) Milwaukee
12) Sacramento
13) Kansas City
14) Pittsburgh
15) Memphis
From BusinessWeek: BusinessWeek.com ranked 50 of the largest metros based on a variety of factors including depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space. The most heavily weighted factors were the depression, suicide, jobs (unemployment and job loss), and crime rates. The depression rate is based on drug company data on antidepressant sales. The rate of depression within a place, the total number of reported depression cases divided by the total population.
