Who’s happiest at work? Hint: It’s not women
Americans say they are happy at work. Are they really? When asked how they feel overall about their jobs, most U.S. workers are positive, with 62.7% saying they are satisfied, according to new survey data from the Conference Board, a business-research group.
That is the highest job-satisfaction rating since the survey began in 1987. Dig deeper, though, and that figure might have plateaued, the researchers said, along with a widening gap in job satisfaction between men and women. Nearly 65% of men say they are happy with their jobs compared with 60% of women.
The largest gaps in satisfaction between men and women were related to financial benefits of work, such as wages, benefits and bonuses. Despite overall satisfaction ticking higher in the past year, drops were recorded in all 26 specific categories that workers were asked about—from wages to work-life balance. Those declines indicate that overall job satisfaction is at risk despite the record overall job-satisfaction rating.
“We’ve never had a year where we’ve had that paradox," Allan Schweyer, a principal researcher at the Conference Board, said. The American worker has a lot of reasons to feel upbeat. Unemployment has been below 4% for two years, wages finally started growing faster than inflation last summer and wealth has been bolstered by rising stock and home prices.
In many white-collar jobs, employees enjoy latitude to work from home or flex their hours. The latest jobs report shows a still-strong labor market, though unemployment ticked up to 3.9% from March’s 3.8%. A confluence of negative factors has accompanied the positives.
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