At the beginning of the year, The World Best Cities 2021 published its ranking with the best cities to live in this year, and both Barcelona and Madrid managed to sneak into the top ten best-placed options to settle and reside.

However, if only the labor factor is taken into account, a study with the best cities to work, the landscape changes a lot.

The latest wave of the study Decoding Global Talent, carried out at the end of 2020 by the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, has resulted in a ranking with the ten most desired cities in the world to work internationally.

For example, the impact of the pandemic has been taken into account, and the results show that Eastern cities are more attractive and Spain is hit hard.

In fact, the high rates of infection in Spain have negatively affected its image abroad. Although there is still only one Spanish city among those selected compared to previous years, Barcelona has fallen from second place in 2018 to ninth.

Worse has been the fall of Spain in general, which has lost ten places, when in 2018 it was sixth.

London leads the ranking

Of all the cities in the world, despite the pandemic or Brexit, looking ahead London continues to be at the top of the ranking as the most attractive city to work for. It was the result of a survey of 208,807 workers in 190 countries (more than 5,000 people from Spain, Germany, France or the United States).

8% of the employees consulted have supported the choice of London for the third time, after also leading in 2014 and 2018.

After London, there are Amsterdam, Dubai, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Barcelona and Sydney within the top ten cities. You can see a great representation of the Middle East and Asia and the fall of the West.

Barcelona has achieved 9% support. Of note is the drop of six places in New York or the rise of nine places in Abu Dhabi and eight places in Singapore.

Besides these ten, if you continue searching in the classification, they appear next Paris, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Toronto, Seoul, Brussels, Zurich, Kuala Lumpur, Genoa, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Vienna, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Munich, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Stockholm and Istanbul.

Spain falls ten places and Canada triumphs by countries

If you are looking for a country other than Spain to travel to and find work in, the international community of respondents has chosen Canada as the best country to work in. It surpasses its neighbor, the United States, which occupies the second position.

They are followed by Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, France and New Zealand.

In 2014, Spain became eighth, and in 2018 it rose to the sixth ideal destination, but now in 2020 it has dropped ten places.

The reason is none other than the ability to manage the pandemic, since those with the highest infection rate per million inhabitants as of November 2020 are the ones that have decreased the most, as has also happened to Belgium, Italy, France or Austria.

This has favored countries such as Malaysia, South Korea or Singapore.