Iowa is home to plenty of hardworking citizens who get up every day and try to accomplish their working goals. Whether that goal is to finish a project, build new roads, plow fields by a certain time, feed the animals on the farm, heal the sick, etc. Hundreds of thousands of Iowans wake up, go to work every day, and do whatever they can to provide for their family/themselves.

Iowa is mostly made up of smaller cities/towns and I think the rest of the country would be surprised by just how hard Iowans work. Iowa is the leading corn producer in the country, and the nation's largest pork producer, and there are around 84,000 farms in Iowa, according to USDA Nationa Agricultural. There are plenty of farmers here in Iowa that don't take days off.

America puts in more hours at work than many other industrialized countries. According to Wallet Hub, the average U.S. worker puts in about 1,811 hours of work per year. This is 204 more hours than Japan, 279 more than the U.K., and 470 more than Germany.

This study from Wallet Hub compared 116 of the largest cities in the United States, using 11 different metrics, to determine which cities work the hardest.

Des Moines

Iowa's capital city ranks as the 62nd hardest-working city in the country. The data ranges from each city's employment rate, average weekly work hours, and workers who have multiple jobs.

While hard work is a staple in America and it's one of the main reasons our country has been so successful, it can have negative effects on Americans. This can lead people to be overworked and take a toll on their mental and physical health. According to Wallet Hub "Even though people in the hardest-working cities are the backbone of our economy, they shouldn't forget to take the occasional break for their mental and physical health."

I'd be very curious to see a study like this on some of the country's smaller cities. It would be hard for me to believe Iowa's thousands of farmers, in various smaller cities in the state, wouldn't blow some of these numbers out of the water for weekly hours worked or least amount of days off per year. Iowa is full of people who are up before the sun and work long after it's gone down.

Even though Iowa's capitol is the only city large enough to make it into this study, you and I both know many more cities/towns that could be represented.