Much fuss was made this week after a report was released that showed U.S. job satisfaction at its lowest level in two decades. In a time when millions are out of work, you’d think people would be happy to have almost any jobs.
The Conference Board, a research firm funded by about 2,000 companies, commissioned the report, called “I Can’t Get No … Job Satisfaction, That Is.”
The Conference Board concluded that “Americans of all ages and income brackets continue to grow increasingly unhappy at work,” and this message was widely discussed and repeated.
The report was based on the answers of 2,900 respondents to a summer questionnaire about consumer confidence. Participants were also asked to rate how satisfied they are with their work on a scale of one to five, with five being the most satisfied.
Only 45% of the respondents marked either four or five, which is the lowest level since the board began asking people the question in 1987, when 61% of respondents expressed satisfaction.
When asked to name the most enjoyable parts of their jobs, the top answer from respondents was the commute. Not exactly a vote of confidence for their employers. (Enjoying the company of their co-workers was the respondents’ second best part of the workday.)
After the dust settled around this report, some people started questioning the vast discrepancies seen here compared with the findings of other job satisfaction studies.
Other polls that have measured job satisfaction in both good and bad times have found nearly nine out of 10 people are happy with the work they do.
Gallup has conducted a poll every August for the last 20 years that found 85% to 94% of respondents were either completely or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.
Some skeptics of the Conference Board’s report pointed to the fact that some of its earlier reports contained answers from people not chosen at random (although participants do encompass a wide range of ethnicities, ages and incomes) and the phrasing in the questions about topics like job satisfaction is open to interpretation.
Perhaps more people are dissatisfied by their jobs because the recession has forced to them to take employment below what they see as their proper level or in a different field than they would prefer.
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams offered a different view: “When the economy was good, everybody was happier, no matter what their job was. The fact that you can’t change jobs in this economy makes you think your current job is worse.”
Whatever the reason, it’s disturbing to think that less than half of American workers are satisfied at work and that many enjoy their commute best of all.
—
The Washington Post ran an interesting story this week that went beyond just the raw numbers of the job satisfaction report and delved into which workers are the most and least happy.
People in their 50s are generally the most satisfied by their jobs because they have found a field they excel in, have been promoted and been given a degree of independence in their work.
The Conference Board found that people under the age of 25 are the least satisfied with their jobs, likely because they are working for lower wages, possibly not in their first choice field and are having to cope with the “real world” for the first time.
Unsurprisingly, the people who are happiest are the ones in helping professions or those doing creative work. Firefighters, clergy and physical therapists are likely to have high job satisfaction, as are those in jobs that involve caring for, teaching and protecting others.
Customer service and the food service industry, jobs like bartending, clothing and home furnishing sales and meatpacking, ranked low on job satisfaction. Roofers were found to be the least happy, with only 25% saying they are satisfied with their work.
With one in 10 American workers unemployed, I’m curious to see whether these numbers change as the economy improves and companies start hiring more people again.
What do you think about the polls and the conflicting results? Leave your comment here!
Employers are laying off full time workers, making them part time and without benefits but letting them work just enough to not be able to collect unemployment. The employers are no longer matching the 401K contributions. They’ve cut out holiday gifts, raised insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, required you to do more work for the same or less pay, and then tell you to be grateful you have a job. The Executives are still getting their big bonuses and their raises though. The utility companies are getting their increases. The groceries are costing more. Gas prices are rising. Child care prices are rising. Everything is costing more, except the real estate market has plummeted and so have our incomes. You can only pull a belt just so tight. Anybody who claims that the cost of living has risen 3.5% (or whatever it supposedly is at the moment) has their heads in the sand. I cannot buy the same bag of frozen vegetables that I paid $2.69 for last year for less than $3.59 this year. Then the manufacturers make the packages smaller for more money. For example, a box of diapers that contained 112 became a box of diapers that contained 102, and then 92, then 80 and now the same brand, same size contains 60 diapers. So the price has almost doubled — far cry from 3.5%. When you go to work and know you’re going to bust your butt twice as hard for 75% of the pay in order to have 50% of the purchasing power to maintain your home which is worth less than you paid for it — you tell me, isn’t it obvious why people are less satisfied with their jobs. And to top it off, you are penalized if you actually do maintain your precious FICO score and pay your bills –you can’t get assistance for any reason.