Are Americans Satisfied With Their Jobs?
Jobs, Careers, and Levels of Responsibility
Job satisfaction may or may not be related to your career or your level of responsibility. For example, you may be studying to become an engineer, a doctor, or an attorney, but during your school years, you could be working for a wonderful Italian restaurant. You might love your job, but this job has little to do with your career aspirations.
Conversely, you might be on the fast track in your career as a financial adviser, banking executive, or health care professional. However, you might be very dissatisfied with your job because of circumstances with your employer, business conditions, or your relationship with senior management. On paper, your career is progressing as you hoped, your level of responsibility is high, and your star is shining. But you're miserable because the specific job you now have is unrewarding for a variety of reasons.
Another situation is a combination of the two scenarios described above. You have graduated with honors from a well-respected culinary school and have a distinct flair for creating wonderful cuisine. Yet you are currently working as a line chef or cook in a restaurant serving less than outstanding dishes. You might be pleased that you are working in the career of your choice, but you have a job that offers no challenge and actually may serve to retard your professional growth.
Job satisfaction involves much more than acceptable compensation, prestigious titles, or an expense account. It does involve a complex combination of physical, psychological, and perceptual issues that, when put together, create a feeling of job satisfaction or displeasure.
The difficulty in assessing all of the components involved in job satisfaction leads to the most common and easily manageable method of arriving at conclusions: ask the workforce. They will state their level of job satisfaction. Should one wish to quantify the factors that contribute to or detract from job satisfaction, they could analyze the conditions present in satisfying and unsatisfying situations. Most observers are somewhat surprised at the results of recent respected surveys.
What the Statistics Indicate About American Worker Job Satisfaction
In 2007, the
- Satisfied with their job: 86%
- Very satisfied with their job: 48%
- Very dissatisfied with their job: 4%
- Age 65 or over satisfied with their job: 71%
- Age 29 or under satisfied with their job: 42%
- Holding “prestigious” jobs and satisfied: 57%
- Working at the lowest earning jobs and satisfied: 35%
- Earning $12,500 or less and satisfied: 40%
- Earning over $110,000 and satisfied: 68%
All the evidence indicates that most Americans are satisfied with their jobs. A surprising 48% were “very” satisfied with their positions. The above summary graphically shows the inconsistency of the results and some interesting numbers (e.g., 40% job satisfaction of people earning less than $12,500 per year). At a minimum, these results support the belief that positive job satisfaction is a combination of complex factors, many of which do not relate to compensation or other monetary benefits. The overall respondent result of almost 90% stating they were satisfied with their jobs is significant by itself.
Another study conducted by the Segal Company, a New York-based HR consulting firm, took a slightly different approach with the following results.
Those Under 40 years old:
- 54% were actively looking for a new job.
- 53% were satisfied with their compensation at their current job.
- 63% were satisfied with their benefits.
- 50% were satisfied with their career choice and progression.
Those Over 40 years old:
- 42% were actively looking for a new job.
- 49% were satisfied with their compensation at their current job.
- 65% were satisfied with their benefits.
- 48% were satisfied with their career choice and progression.
As you can see, the results for both age groups were similar. This further compounds the uncertainty about the active components of positive job satisfaction. While the
The good news for management: around one-half or more of respondents in both surveys indicated they were satisfied with their jobs and their compensation. However, a sizeable percentage of the workforce is less than satisfied.
The troubling question, unanswered by the studies, remains. What components, when combined with compensation issues, create positive or negative job satisfaction? Those looking for a blueprint to create a job satisfaction environment continue to be disappointed. The best approach may be to examine the companies with a large number of staff who are satisfied and, where possible, duplicate their program.
There are two issues with this action plan, however. First, identifying the companies that have overall high job satisfaction might pose a challenge. There are a number of sources that publish “best companies to work for” lists on an annual basis. You might start there and examine the conditions that help them earn this rating.
The second issue is the industry in which your company operates. In some cases, the same factors that create positive job satisfaction at one company may just as easily generate negative results in another company. Industry differences and staff composition may dictate different approaches to creating a satisfying environment. It is somewhat comforting that the majority of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. These types of honest and anonymous surveys tend to have accurate results. Yet, management can wonder how their company’s performance might improve by increasing their overall job satisfaction level.