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North Texas Cities Are Among The Hardest-Working In U.S., Study Says

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Several North Texas cities ranked high on WalletHub's study 2016's Hardest Working Cities in America.

Five stories that have North Texas talking: Texans in Plano and Irving work especially hard; Houston isn’t ready for “the perfect storm;” an IHOP in Austin upset customers with an offensive receipt; and more.

March 4 is Employee Appreciation Day. For the occasion, analysts from WalletHub, a financial reporting website, compared 116 U.S. cities to measure where Americans work the hardest. An easy answer to that is North Texas. Here are the DFW area cities near the top:

#3 Plano

#5 Irving

#12 Corpus Christi

#18 Garland

#22 Dallas

#24 Arlington

#26 Fort Worth

The rankings were determined by six factors: average work week hours, labor force participation rate, commute time, workers with multiple jobs, volunteers hours per resident and leisure time spent on an average day.

Some other interesting work-related findings in the study: “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we are 400 percent more productive today than in 1950. Were we lazier then? Not at all. On the contrary, mid-century Americans worked nearly 205 hours more per year than we did in 2011. All of our productivity gains in recent decades simply resulted from rapid technological growth that allowed us to increase automation and efficiency.”

More from the study. [WalletHub]

 

  • It’s not a matter of “if” but “when” Houston will experience a devastating hurricane, and the city isn’t ready. The Texas Tribune launched a dense multimedia project on the potential for a “perfect storm” not only threatening to take many lives but also to devastate the economy and environment. An excerpt from the project:
“Such a storm would devastate the Houston Ship Channel, shuttering one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Flanked by 10 major refineries — including the nation’s largest — and dozens of chemical manufacturing plants, the Ship Channel is a crucial transportation route for crude oil and other key products, such as plastics and pesticides. A shutdown could lead to a spike in gasoline prices and many consumer goods — everything from car tires to cell phone parts to prescription pills.”

Explore Hell And High Water. [The Texas Tribune]

  • An Austin couple is upset with words written on their receipt from a local IHOP. The couple ordered a meal to-go at 3 a.m. Monday morning while traveling back to Austin. The top of the receipt read “BLACK PPL” to identify their order. Arainia Brown decided to post a photo of the receipt on Facebook rather than confront their server, a young black man. WFAA quoted Brown saying, "You could have asked me my name," said Brown. "Don't put, don't label me. I don't label you." Read more. [WFAA]
  • Two North Texas-shot films made first cut for the 10th annual Dallas International Film Festival. On Thursday the festival announced its first 10 films for this year’s event. Art&Seek reported on the North Texas selections: “‘Three Days in August’ is the product of the Sionna Project – a screenwriting competition co-sponsored by the festival and Studio Movie Grill. The film stars Barry Bostwick, Meg Foster and Mariette Hartley in the story of an artist who has misgivings about painting her family’s portrait. And ‘Daylight’s End’ – also shot and produced locally – centers on a drifter who tries to rescue a survivors of a zombie attack holed up in an abandoned police station.” See the complete list of films. [Art&Seek]
  • Several members of the Travis County GOP desperately want to remove the newly elected chairman. Robert Morrow won the seat with 54 percent of the vote Tuesday night, so why the opposition. Here’s the lede from The Texas Tribune story: “The newly elected chair of the Republican Party in the county that includes the Texas Capitol spent most of election night tweeting about former Gov. Rick Perry’s sexual orientation and former President Bill Clinton’s penis, and insisting that members of the Bush family should be in jail.”Vice chair and Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak worries how Morrow would represent the party. Read more. [The Texas Tribune]