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Sustainable Happiness: How Happiness Studies Can Contribute to a More Sustainable Future This paper provides the rationale for integrating sustainability principles with happiness studies. Examples of sustainable happiness in practice are provided as well as recommendations for further applications.

My own research has documented the connection between a large-scale presence of the creative class of workers -- people who work in science and technology; business and management; arts, culture and entertainment; medicine and education -- and the prosperity of cities. But it's about more than prosperity. Once a certain threshold of income is met, our research finds, the work people do plays a substantial role in their happiness, over and above the effect of income at the national6, state7, and city8 levels. Our findings here reinforce and confirm this conclusion. There is a substantial positive correlation between city happiness and the share of creative class jobs (.5) and a significant negative one between well-being and the share of working class jobs (-.4).

composition of city job markets plays a considerable role in our sense of well-being as well.

cities with more blue-collar economies have been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis. Unemployment is high, incomes are lower.  Workers in these kinds of jobs have faced much greater trouble finding new jobs (the unemployment rate for production workers is 10 percent; for construction workers it tops 20 percent). Not only do these workers have skills and incomes which are tied to their specific jobs, many in these areas are trapped in underwater homes and unable to relocate to areas with more work and greater opportunity:  Hardly a recipe for happiness

For decades now, at least one-third of the city's 12,000 employees, mainly office workers and professionals, have had a deal where they can work a bit of extra time each day, then take off every second Friday as a holiday.

The argument is that you have to do something like this to make the job attractive or else you won't be able to keep staff. But I can't think of anybody I know outside of government that gets every second Friday off. Can you?

've always thought it's not necessary to retain staff by giving them every second Friday off. ... I'm not buying the logic of the policy."

Industry officials in Alberta are questioning the federal government's plan to cut back on visas for skilled workers, saying the province's expanding economy needs more employees.

Ed Stelmach. "I know that they are reflecting some of the issues in Ontario. But we are in a completely different position."

Overseas visa targets 2010 2011 % change Federal skilled worker visas 69,915 55,900 - 20.0 Provincial nominees visas 36,650 40,300 + 9.0 Total economic class visa 161,630 151,000 - 6.6