The usual caveat that it's meant to measure a "hardship index" for companies relocating workers. I wouldn't use it as a measure for where to best move to as there are many factors it doesn't measure (such as how good the job market is, how expensive cost of living is, etc)- aside from maybe preferring cities in the approximate top (80+ out of 100), which is mostly "nice" cities in the developed world (no surprise there).
Assuming you're anyway not contemplating moving to Nairobi or Tehran I don't think this really gives much useful info as you can't really say you'd like life in a city with a slightly better score than another, it only matter if the gap is large.
E.g. I spent 8 years living in Vienna followed by 10 years in Berlin (a bit further below in the rating) and I don't feel my quality of life is at all lower here (I much prefer living in Berlin)- the main difference I notice is that Vienna is much better at cleaning up the trash from public spaces than Berlin, and a smaller city is generally easier to navigate.
Yep, Sydney is ranked #4 yet is currently experiencing a severe shortage of rental properties where the average rent is now 40% higher[1] than 2 years ago.
I would describe my personal experience in Zurich (and having lived in Berlin before) a bit differently.
Everyone loves whining about finding a place to rent in both places, but in Berlin it's about finding anything at all whereas in Zurich it's usually about finding something cheap and ideally in a desirable Kreis 3 or Kreis 4 neighborhood. Yes it's competitive, but you will find something with realistic expectations + budget.
NB: I don't earn a big tech salary either. If you land a Google/Meta/IBM/Disney/adjacent job, the (rental) housing market should not give you any headaches.
Indeed. Which is worst, cities like Zurich and London where housing is very expensive but is available especially with a skilled job, or Berlin where housing is not too expensive, but almost non available to newcomers even on skilled jobs?
> Berlin where housing is not too expensive, but almost non available to newcomers even on skilled jobs?
It's not available to long term residents either. In Berlin one has to compile and update monthly the application portfolio. Good luck having a landlord who'll issue debt free certificate more often than once a year. Think will get away without debt free certificate? Someone else will have it, sorry.
Finding an expensive apartment vs. not finding an apartment at all, really?
Say you are single, have some experience and get low-balled into a CHF 100k contract. Not counting 13th salary this translates to CHF 7.7k per month gross / CHF 6k net (before health insurance). I.e. at up to 1/3 of your monthly net you can spend up to 2k per month on an apartment. There are plenty of those to choose from inside Zurich city, even if some might be small for the price or have other drawbacks. You can find cheaper/bigger/nicer easily by expanding your search radius to the (extremely well-connected) suburbs.
Only if you're a relentless hunter. Otherwise it looks more like >2.5k CHF monthly. 400-500 CHF monthly on health insurance, 500 CHF monthly for random tickets, fees, fines, and other "disciplinary measures". Suddenly you find yourself being poor in Switzerland. Being poor among rich hurts multiplied.
Depends. Sure, it hurts your ego being "poor" in a super rich country, but that has the advantages of being safe everywhere, not being stabbed for wearing a nice watch, having access to the best medical care in the world, a reliable insurance and justice system for when things go wrong, clean air and drinking/bathing water, a high trust society where you're not afraid of being scammed everywhere or leaving your door open at night, not afraid that anyone will shoot you in your school, etc.
Some people would rather be dirt poor in Zurich, than filthy rich in Zimbabwe.
Prices in Germany and Austria are not that much lower for handymen and locksmiths, unless you already have "a guy".
Ultimately it's supply and demand. It's the consequence of everyone wanting to be a latte sipping WFH laptop worker, instead of a contractor/handyman.
Also, worth considering that locksmiths charge crazy money because they basically work shit hours and have to deal with shitty customers. You're basically on call 24/7, on the road a lot, and most of your customers who call you are party people who realize they lost their keys when they get home from the bar/club at 2AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and call you desperately trying to get into their house, and once you do open their door they start to bitch, moan and can even get aggressive refusing to pay, because you're charging too much money for "5 minutes of work". Sure, maybe you make a solid thousand Euros that night, but you basically fucked your weekend. Not great work/life balance IMHO, which is why not so many do it.
In life you often have to choose the least worst option for you out of two bad ones if you want to survive. It's rare to have your cake and eat it too, especially when it comes to housing in desirable metro areas and you not being wealthy. Beggars can't be choosers.
Granted, nobody put a gun to your head and said you must live in Zurich, London, Dublin, Berlin, or any other city with a housing shortage, it's your own voluntary decision to do that, but doing so you must be mindful of the compromises and sacrifices such a choice requires.
I heard this in Germany a lot in various circumstances while seeing on my monthly payslips deductions totalling well over 40%.
> nobody put a gun to your head and said you must live in Zurich, London, Dublin, Berlin
I didn't force myself to that bloody miserable country either, but got qualified job and was granted relocation there. At which point I'm not a beggar anymore and can start posing even a smallest demand?
>I heard this in Germany a lot in various circumstances while seeing on my monthly payslips deductions totalling over 40%.
That's the situation with social welfare states. They're not the USA. Everyone contributes as much as they can while receiving benefits per their needs. It's a social contract where people, for better or for worse, give up their individual opportunities for wealth generation, for the sake of collective wealth and welfare safety nets. Germany is not the place to move to, if you want to make wealth and pay as little taxes as possible.
>I didn't force myself to that bloody miserable country either, but got qualified job and was granted relocation there.
You could have gotten a qualified job in any other country, nobody dragged you into forced labor to Germany kicking and screaming I assume. Once you saw the situation you could have packed up and moved.
> At which point I'm not a beggar anymore and can start posing even a smallest demand?
You are free to make as many demands as you want, most likely nobody in Germany will care. If you want change, the best way is to vote with your feet and move to a country that's already built on your beliefs (tax heavens). Trying to change a country, as na individual, is like trying to move the planet.
The third bomb, a classic, bringing up comparisons with the USA. Listen, I'm EU citizen relocating within EEA and I don't care about your US fetish or complex. I turned around and moved away indeed. Now Germany will be more preoccupied in vetting boat immigrants. I wish they'll find enough qualified people ready to give up their individual opportunities for wealth generation, while repeatedly being moved back at the end of the queue to the benefits they need! Sounds like a lovely deal.
I was trying to explain things to you respectfully, and using the US was an easy way to exemplify an extreme, and you go straight to the throat with bullshit accusations. Lovely. Cheers mate!
Swiss companies are glad to hire EU folks just below the average Swiss salary. The relocation package is "we expect you to show up in the office on the first day".
I think that's most cities. Toronto's rents have gone up about the same since two years ago, but many cities in Ontario and British Columbia have had rents go up quite a lot as well. I think Nova Scotia also saw pretty significant rent increases as well but I could be mixing it up with Prince Edward Island.
>I spent 8 years living in Vienna followed by 10 years in Berlin (a bit further below in the rating) and I don't feel my quality of life is at all lower here (I much prefer living in Berlin)
Obviously. People and individuals value completely different things for their personal quality of life than whatever variables, weights and values The Economist uses to calculate their scores.
Their formula constantly puts Vienna at the top, a city which also comes out at the top of the least friendly cities for expats surveys, which is an important metric for many expats.
I don't give a damn how livable a city is on paper in some random statistic, and especially if the computed livability is disproportionately biased towards the locals and against the foreigners (FPÖ, the far right party in Austria founded by Nazis, keeps getting 22% to 32% votes lately, and since it's disproportionately difficult to become a citizen to vote them out, compared to all other EU countries, so you'll be stuck in "taxation without representation" limbo, working to fund the coffers of a country where nearly a third of citizens hate your kind)
My point is, livability means far more for most people than whatever The Economist measures, and I'm tired their trope keeps being regurgitated every year everywhere like it's some ground truth on livability. It's not. Livability means so much more, that The Economist doesn't talk about.
> , and in Austria you can't vote in national elections if you're not a citizen
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it is norm for significant majority of countries in the world. Personally, I think that non-citizens should be allowed to vote on local elections (up to the city level), as they're impacted by local policies as residents, but on national level it is ok if only citizens can vote.
Corrected, and as I emphasized in my comment, the difference is in many EU countries it's very easy to get citizenship after 4-6 years wile also keeping your original citizenship and not being forced into military service, so you can vote on nationals and have the chance to vote out the ultra-right-wingers.
In Austria that's not the case. Any talks about easing up the restrictions on gaining citizenship, allowing dual citizenship or removing mandatory military service for citizens, end up smothered quickly by nationalistic and populist arguments along the lines of "foreigners should have to walk through glass to prove they're worthy for the privilege of becoming one of us".
Becoming a citizen in the UK or Belgium is a rubber stamp in comparison.
Need to correct that the following is how this works in Iceland:
- Icelandic citizen, at least 18 years of age with legal domicile in the municipality in question
- They are either Finnish, Norwegian, Danish or Swedish citizens and fulfill later half of first requirement
- Any other citizen of another state that has had residency in Iceland for 3 years consecutively and fulfills the later half of the first requirement.
So any scandinavian, of age, who moves their domicile to Iceland can immediatly participate in the municipality votes, while others require a 3 year wait.
See the emphasis in my comment on the extreme difficulty of getting citizenship, meaning you'll most likely never be able to vote, unlike other EU countries were getting citizenship a very easy if you've worked and paid taxes a few years, and where you get to keep your other citizenship to not make your life more difficult should you still have businesses to solve back home.
Maybe, if all you want is your country to be a giant retirement home for the ageing locals with a stagnating economy based on Airbnbs/museums fleecing tourists to admire its cohesiveness, but maybe not, if you want your country to be an attractive place for innovative companies to set up shop and for highly skilled people to settle and replace your ageing population to ensure long term economic competitiveness in global growth sectors.
Check Austrian tech wages and number of successful Austrian tech companies to see what I mean. Anti-immigrant policies and conservative attitudes towards foreigners, cut both ways. There's a reason big-tech have offices in Switzerland and Germany but not in Austria.
> There's a reason big-tech have offices in Switzerland
Besides ETH, low corporate income taxes and one of the most secretive banking systems ... what? On open minded society? You've obviously never been to Switzerland. Swirzerland is one of the most cohesive and closed societies in the world.
I'm an Australian, but I lived in the UK from 2016 to 2018. I was able to vote in UK elections (including Brexit) despite not being a citizen, because I'm part of the Commonwealth.
An FB friend is forever blathering on about Vienna and while I think it’s a nice city, her photos and my own limited experience suggest that it’s a great city to live in if you’re Caucasian - how diverse is the place really?
It’s a European capital. Of course most people will be of European origin.
But for Vienna specifically, it has a sizable Turkish population as well (didn’t find a chart about ethnicity-based geographics). I also think (having visited it, but not having lived there, but a culturally similar capital) that while there are definitely some stereotype issues, it is definitely less pronounced in capitals where people actually can occasionally meet with people of color (certain ethnicities are extremely rare in this part of Europe) - but I can’t answer it any more than that.
Not all people born in Europe are caucasian, you know!
And the OECD argues that major world cities often have more in common with each other than other cities and towns in their own countries, in both demographics and challenges, and I find Vienna to be less of a world city in the demographic respect.
These rankings miss one fundamental factor - availability of housing to rent and buy. Once accounted, the ranking would probably inverse. No "livability" matters or makes sense when one has all their possessions in two suitcases and have to move out with one day notice during the first one year or longer.
They miss a lot of factors, and are mostly just for companies to compare "hardship allowances" for relocating workers. It doesn't track a lot of factors that would matter to an individual moving themselves.
Ahh so full relocation package for entire family and household, with infinite company housing in detached house. Yeah if you get this in Zurich or Vienna, sign in immediately. Then also fate of your family will depend on your line manager.
>Yeah if you get this in Zurich or Vienna, sign in immediately. Then also fate of your family will depend on your line manager.
Exactly. Just like how Bitpanda and NXP used to relocate foreign workers and their families to Austria, then fire them when some shit hit the fan, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Moving countries with your family, especially to ones where you have no connections/family/support network and don't speak the language, is incredibly risky unless you're very well off or very talented in a skill that's in high demand where you move.
Like you said, you and your family are at the mercy of your line manager, at least for the fist few years till you get enough credit to qualify for social support and build a support network, so foreign workers tend to put up with way more overtime and unreasonable demands, because they don't want to risk loosing their jobs so soon after investing huge amounts of effort, time and money in relocating their families.
I haven't myself ever been relocated as a worker, but when my brother (while working for one of the US tech giants) was relocated he still had to pay rent & other expenses in the new city himself, the company just found them housing and paid for the cost of the relocation itself ("just", that's still a lot, but what you describe sounds more like what high-level government officials get).
I was lucky once to be relocated like this with housing covered in small studio for the first few months, while being single. I know e.g. that Shell in Hague is beyond generous, including housing in detached house.
> But stability deteriorated elsewhere. Striking workers in Greece, pension protests in France and deadly clashes in Israel and Peru reduced scores in those countries.
???
Who is this list meant for? Seems kind of odd to penalize France because of pension protests
Am an American so might be lacking details, but my understanding is that Macron decided to raise the retirement age which was highly unpopular, and people were pissed off because of it? How do those protests make France "less livable"? If anything, it makes it more livable by my book.
Seems like Economist is just airing political grievances. Usually whenever I see these lists (e.g. "livability index", "democracy index", etc), the list maker shuffles around the top 10-20 countries in order to grind some political axe
Strikes in European countries can be very inconvenient. I work with a mix of British, French and Belgians, and trying to coordinate visiting one another without a rail strike in one of those countries has been very challenging in the last year.
Burning cars on the street would sure affect the livability in my neighborhood. The French are passionate people when protesting. And they protest a lot. Makes sense to me to me to mention it. It’s not about the right to assemble, otherwise I’m sure Hong Kong would be on the first spot on the list.
> Burning cars on the street would sure affect the livability in my neighborhood.
Especially if it's my car. If these guys want to burn property so badly, why don't they bring their own cars to the area and burn them, in a sort of political protest burning man fashion?
If they touch police's or public administration's property, their professional and family lives will be over. No one will torch their own property, duh. So basically you hit the next person you see, ensuring beforehand they're not police or someone well connected.
If Europe is going to be saved it will be from French and Polish people. All others sold their esteem to cosy couch surfing and not talking to your neighbor.
Have you ever worked with French people? If they decide to be abrasive assholes, they will go extra mile to prove it. Somehow it equally applies to both white and Maghreb French.
If you are more interested in best cities by digital nomads, I much prefer nomadlist [1]. Main criteria is safety, cost, internet, fun. You can also add additional filters.
Technically yes, they don't pay salary taxes on nomadic destinations, however in practice, they spend most of their income on these nomadic destinations and probably add a lot more fuel to the economy than an average local.
Tashkent is sure in Asia and not eastern Europe. These kind of mistakes make me annoyed for some reason.
Hardship indices are useful. Beijing was considered a no-hardship posting by the state department but they had to bring it back a hard ship bonus circa 2015 because of the air pollution. Not sure where it is now, but QOL effects living in some places is real.
Wow, I got that work. Took about 20 tries but I could see what you meant from the way the page visibly loads. F5. Wait for it... ESC. If you see the "Get The Full Story" banner, repeat with a different timing between F5 and ESC.
Interesting that none of the top-ten are in the US, and only two are in North America (Vancouver and Toronto). The former has a notoriously tight housing market.
While Toronto housing market may not be as expensive as Vancouver on average, it is still more expensive than pretty much anywhere else in Canada. Toronto is not as geographically squeezed as Vancouver, and number of high-rises built lately and being built now is off the charts. And yet, housing affordability is still the hottest topic in the upcoming mayoral election.
Assuming you're anyway not contemplating moving to Nairobi or Tehran I don't think this really gives much useful info as you can't really say you'd like life in a city with a slightly better score than another, it only matter if the gap is large.
E.g. I spent 8 years living in Vienna followed by 10 years in Berlin (a bit further below in the rating) and I don't feel my quality of life is at all lower here (I much prefer living in Berlin)- the main difference I notice is that Vienna is much better at cleaning up the trash from public spaces than Berlin, and a smaller city is generally easier to navigate.