The least stressful companies to work for in America

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California-based life insurance company Pacific Life was rated the least stressful, at 32%.

In fact, stressful employees can cost companies between $200 and $300 billion each year.

What's more, stress is contagious, making it even more critical for companies to create comfortable working conditions to keep their employees happy.

To find the least stressful employers in America, we looked at Business Insider's latest list of the 50 best companies to work for.

For the second year in a row, Pacific Life Insurance topped the list, with nearly a third (32%) of employees reporting low stress, a significant jump from last year's 23.9%.

The list is based on exclusive data from employer-information website PayScale, which surveyed employees in the US who work at companies that appeared on the 2014 Fortune 500 list.

PayScale calculated scores for each company using six criteria: high job satisfaction, low job stress, ability to telecommute, high job meaning, experienced median pay/total cash compensation, and salary delta. We double-weighted pay to emphasize the importance of companies that compensate their employees well.

Job stress was based on a survey that asked employees, "How stressful is your job/work environment?" The higher percentage of employees who responded with "My job is Relaxing" or "Not stressful," the lower the stress. (Read the full methodology here.)

Here is the full list:

Skye Gould/Business Insider