U.S. federal government employees aged 65 and older are less likely than those aged 18 to 29 to say they get to use their strengths to do what they do best at work. The opposite is the case with U.S. workers in the non-federal sector.
Americans' life ratings were better in April than in any month since August of last year. Americans' life ratings have steadily improved each month since November, when they sank to their lowest level in more than a year.
Gallup's U.S. Standard of Living Index climbed to 40 in April, the highest monthly average in the five years Gallup has tracked this measure. Americans' perceptions of both their current and future standard of living are at five-year highs.
For U.S. workers, a lack of exercise is more closely linked to being obese than any of 26 other behavioral and emotional factors examined. Other factors linked to obesity include not eating healthy, struggling to afford food, and depression.
The annual cost to the U.S. in lost productivity due to absenteeism tied to poor health ranges from $160 million among agricultural workers to $24.2 billion among professionals.
The 52.4% of Americans who exercised frequently in April is lower than it was in the same month last year. Frequent exercise is down in general in 2013 compared with 2012, which was the best year for exercise since 2008.
Female veterans of the U.S. military rate their lives much more highly than male veterans rate theirs. And, while female veterans' life ratings are nearly on par with other women, male veterans' ratings lag far behind men in the general public.
Hawaii residents, on average, remained the least likely in the U.S. to say they felt stressed on any given day in 2012, at 32.1%. West Virginia residents were the most likely to report feeling stress, at 47.1%.
The percentage of Americans lacking health insurance coverage continued to vary widely across U.S. metro areas in 2012, from 4% in Burlington, Vt., and the Boston-Cambridge area to 49% in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas.
Boulder, Colo., remains the U.S. metro area with the lowest obesity rate in the U.S. for the third year in a row, at 12.5% in 2012. Obesity remains highest in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, at 38.5%.