Melbourne named best city for expats

Melbourne has been named best city for expat life in a new survey which ranks 35 cities worldwide on a range of factors.

The data, conducted as part of the Expat Insider 2016 survey, ranked cities around the world according to factors including the quality of life, personal finance, working abroad, and settling in.

Expats in Australia’s second most-populous city were particularly pleased with their work-life balance: Some 79 per cent of respondents rate this positively, which is notably higher than the global average of 60 per cent. Overall job satisfaction in Melbourne is also above average, with 71 per cent rating this factor positively.

The Australian city also excels when it comes to the availability of leisure activities, with 91 per cent rating this aspect positively – 19 percentage points higher than the global average of 72 per cent.

Surprisingly, the American city of Houston took second spot. The Texan city makes it to second place largely thanks to its outstanding result in the Ease of Settling In Index.

Houston owes its high ranking with regard to settling in to a friendly population that offers expats a warm welcome. In fact, about one in three expats (31 per cent) couldn’t be happier about the general friendliness in the “Space City”, and an even higher number (40 per cent) thinks that its residents are perfectly friendly towards foreign nationals in particular. This makes it easier for expats to get used to local life and socialise.

The Spanish capital, Madrid, was third overall, once again mainly due to expats feeling welcome there and finding it easy to make friends.

Australia and Germany were the only countries to have more than one city ranked in the top ten. Sydney joined Melbourne on the higher echelons of the list, which Dusseldorf and Munich both occupy places in the top ten.

However, it would appear that expats are less keen on London. The UK capital ranked it 27th out of 35 cities for best place to live. This is mainly because it scored poorly across nearly all main sub-indexes.

Top 10 cities for expats

1.Melbourne, Australia
2.Houston, USA
3. Madrid, Spain
4. Dusseldorf, Germany
5. Singapore, Singapore
6. Vienna, Austria
7. Munich, Germany
8. Sydney, Australia
9. Mexico City, Mexico
10. Toronto, Canada

Source: Expat Insider 2016

Article published 16th November 2016