Iowa is in the top 10 worst states to work from home

If you didn't have to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, consider yourself lucky. I had to work from home back in August for about 3 weeks. At first you think it's fun to work in your pajamas on your couch, but really it gets boring very quickly.

Some of us in the Quad Cities continue to work from home well over a year after the start of the pandemic. Some people I know really enjoy it, others simply manage. Working from home is easier for some and harder for others due to many factors. Kids, spouse, neighbors, traffic, Wi-Fi, your attention span, and many other things. Another factor to find out how easy or difficult working from home can be is by what state you live in.

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A new study from our friends at WalletHub shows just how easy, or difficult it is to work from home. In order to find out the states that provide the best conditions for working from home, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across two key dimensions:

Work Environment
Living Environment

WalletHub evaluated those two dimensions using 12 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the best infrastructure.

After all of that math, this is the list that WalletHub came up with:

Source: WalletHub

The top 10 best states to work from home are:

Delaware
North Carolina
Georgia
New Hampshire
Tennessee
Arizona
New Jersey
Texas
Utah
Oregon

Neither Iowa or Illinois were in the top 10 best states to work from home. Iowa though is in the bottom 10 and considered one of the worst states to work from home. This is the top 10 worst states to work from home (1 being the worst):

Alaska
Hawaii
North Dakota
Mississippi
Arkansas
Montana
Wyoming
New Mexico
Iowa
West Virginia

WalletHub was even kind enough to give me more facts about Iowa and why they ranked at #43 on this list.

25^th – Share of Population Working from Home (pre-COVID-19)
29^th – Share of Potential Telecommuters
35^th – Households' Internet Access
49^th – Average Home Square Footage
22^nd – Cybersecurity
20^th – Average Retail Price of Electricity
17^th – Internet Cost

Iowa had an overall score of 53.49, with at score of 38 in "Working Environment" score of 38, and a score of 48 in "Living Environment".

Illinois didn't do too hot either. Illinois ranked 36th overall on this list. Illinois had an overall score of 55.41, with a 24 in "Working Environment" and a 41 in "Living Environment".