Study Finds Most Fulfilling Jobs: Self-Employment, Government Work, Managing, and Social Service (seattletimes.com) 27
"Envy the lumberjacks, for they perform the happiest, most meaningful work on earth," the Washington Post wrote almost two years ago, after analyzing more than 13,000 journals from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' time-use survey. (For the first time the surveys asked how workers felt during the day.) And outdoor forestry jobs "look awesome by that metric, dangerous as they often are in the long run," the Post wrote in a recent follow-up. [Alternate URL.]
But is that really the right metric? "Readers kept reminding us that there's more to a fulfilling job than how happy you are while doing it." What about those wanting jobs where they're meaningfully impacting the world? We didn't have a stellar way to measure other feelings about work, but we kept our eye on an often-overlooked federal data provider: AmeriCorps. The independent agency, which CEO Michael D. Smith described to us as "bite-sized" but "punching well above our weight," funds the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, part of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey... In 2021 and again in 2023, the researchers behind the CEV asked if you agree or disagree with these four statements:
- I am proud to be working for my employer.
- My main satisfaction in life comes from work.
- My workplace contributes to the community.
- I contribute to the community through my work....
The workers most likely to say they're proud to be working for their employer and that they gain satisfaction from work are — surprise! — the self-employed. The self-employed who are incorporated — a group that often includes small-business owners — are almost twice as likely as private-sector, for-profit workers to strongly profess pride in their employer.
Government and nonprofit workers fall somewhere in the middle on those questions. But they rank at the very top on "My workplace contributes to the community" and "I contribute to the community through my work." Local government workers, who include teachers, take the top spot for strong agreement on both, followed by nonprofit workers. Private-sector, for-profit workers once again lag behind. The jobs that do worse on these measures tend to be in manufacturing or other blue-collar production and extraction jobs, or at the lower-paid end of the service sector. Folks in food services (e.g., bartenders and food prep), janitorial roles and landscaping, and personal services (e.g., barbershops, laundry and hotels) all struggle to find greater meaning in their work. Though some better-paid service jobs also struggle by some measures — think sales, engineering or software development.
On the questions regarding pride in your employer and life satisfaction, we see managers and our old friends in agriculture and forestry take the top spots. But right behind them — and actually in the lead in the other question — lurks the real standout, a set of jobs we'd classify as "care and social services." That includes, most notably, religious workers. Looking a bit deeper at about 100 occupations for which we have detailed data, we see clergy were most likely to strongly agree on every question.
Other observations from the article:
But is that really the right metric? "Readers kept reminding us that there's more to a fulfilling job than how happy you are while doing it." What about those wanting jobs where they're meaningfully impacting the world? We didn't have a stellar way to measure other feelings about work, but we kept our eye on an often-overlooked federal data provider: AmeriCorps. The independent agency, which CEO Michael D. Smith described to us as "bite-sized" but "punching well above our weight," funds the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, part of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey... In 2021 and again in 2023, the researchers behind the CEV asked if you agree or disagree with these four statements:
- I am proud to be working for my employer.
- My main satisfaction in life comes from work.
- My workplace contributes to the community.
- I contribute to the community through my work....
The workers most likely to say they're proud to be working for their employer and that they gain satisfaction from work are — surprise! — the self-employed. The self-employed who are incorporated — a group that often includes small-business owners — are almost twice as likely as private-sector, for-profit workers to strongly profess pride in their employer.
Government and nonprofit workers fall somewhere in the middle on those questions. But they rank at the very top on "My workplace contributes to the community" and "I contribute to the community through my work." Local government workers, who include teachers, take the top spot for strong agreement on both, followed by nonprofit workers. Private-sector, for-profit workers once again lag behind. The jobs that do worse on these measures tend to be in manufacturing or other blue-collar production and extraction jobs, or at the lower-paid end of the service sector. Folks in food services (e.g., bartenders and food prep), janitorial roles and landscaping, and personal services (e.g., barbershops, laundry and hotels) all struggle to find greater meaning in their work. Though some better-paid service jobs also struggle by some measures — think sales, engineering or software development.
On the questions regarding pride in your employer and life satisfaction, we see managers and our old friends in agriculture and forestry take the top spots. But right behind them — and actually in the lead in the other question — lurks the real standout, a set of jobs we'd classify as "care and social services." That includes, most notably, religious workers. Looking a bit deeper at about 100 occupations for which we have detailed data, we see clergy were most likely to strongly agree on every question.
Other observations from the article:
- "As a rule, you feel better about your job as you get older. Presumably, it's some mix of people who love their work delaying retirement, people job-hopping until they find meaningful employment, and people learning to love whatever hand they've been dealt."
- "Most measures of satisfaction also rise with education, often quite sharply. Someone with a graduate degree is twice as likely as a high school dropout to strongly agree their workplace contributes to the community."
- But... "More-educated folks are actually a bit less likely to strongly agree that work is their main satisfaction in life."
'Work is their main satisfaction in life' (Score:2)
Seriously? Many people agree with statement? No wonder our family life is so often barren; we expect too little...
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Seriously? Many people agree with statement? No wonder our family life is so often barren; we expect too little...
That only applies to people with formal education, not to autodidactic coders in their moms' basements. Ahh . . . satisfaction . . .
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Psychotherapist: "Does anyone else suffer from mental illness in your family?"
Client: "No, they seem to positively enjoy it!"
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Sure why not. Firstly how much time do you work vs spend meaningfully with the family? And when I say meaningfully I don't mean that family satisfaction is derrived from you doing dishes while the wife is making the kids do their homework. You're at work 8 hours a day. You waste another 1-2 in traffic. Life tasks take up several more hours - cooking, cleaning, making dinner, brushing teeth, showering, chasing after your kids, etc, and then you need downtime too, add in 8 hours for sleep and the only real sa
Re: 'Work is their main satisfaction in life' (Score:2)
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I think that we conflate two very different things in general:
There is "Work" as in "The thing you go to on monday morning and clock in so that you can get paid and can afford to do other things with your life, despite it being a drain on your very soul and your main source of unhappiness".
And then there is "Work" as in "The thing you are good at because you have done it all your life, and it's what give you satisfaction when you put all your knowledge and experience together into something better than the
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I mean, if you really want to ignore your friends & fa
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I'll keep it simple:
- The bigger the company, the less you will enjoy working there.
When you work in the resource sector, all you do is "one thing" every day. If that's what you like, and you are not compelled to move up, stay there, and keep making that money. It's the people in charge that are often the morons ruining the place, and taking pleasure in making you not enjoy it, because people get hired out of what makes them competent and happy into supervisory, management members who "don't do anything mea
My main satisfaction in life comes from work. (Score:2)
That's an odd question to ask. I love what I do and would recommend everybody to take on a job that they enjoy doing. But that's far from saying that my work is my main satisfaction in life. Mind you I've been self-employed for 27 years and would recommend that as well. Don't get me wrong. If I'm in the middle of a good coding run, I'm in Zen and enjoying myself. But as much as I like my work, I like traveling and listening to music more than my work.
Talking about being self-employed, I have noticed h
Envy the lumberjacks... (Score:2)
Are you sure ?!? [youtube.com]
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fulfilling job...when getting the paycheck !! (Score:2)
Government work? (Score:2)
Aren't those the people who the incoming administration thinks of as "agents of the Deep State"?
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Aren't those the people who the incoming administration thinks of as "agents of the Deep State"?
Just wait until people can't get their monthly checks or can't get permits or anything else they rely on the government to do. Then you'll hear the whining at which point my response will be, "You voted for this. Deal with it."
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Aren't those the people who the incoming administration thinks of as "agents of the Deep State"?
Just wait until people can't get their monthly checks or can't get permits or anything else they rely on the government to do. Then you'll hear the whining at which point my response will be, "You voted for this. Deal with it."
I could say the same thing to you when you and your kids go broke paying massive taxes for government bloat because they’re incapable of understanding the concept of balance. ALL of society will have a response for you at that point. You voted for this bloat. Now pay for it.
Quite frankly, even YOU wouldn’t be surprised if someone walked into the Government check-printing office to find 80% of the staff could be fired eliminating layers of pointless bureaucracy, all while delivering checks as
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Been there, done that ... (Score:2)
Been there, done that. Just leaves you chewed up, pissed off and poor.
At this point, I'd be happy to sell cigarettes and booze to four year olds.
I mean, I still hope for the best, but in the real world it is a combination of nepotism and corruption that lets one rise.
Self-employed proud to work for their employers (Score:2)
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Speaking from experience - being self employed also brings uncertainty. That monthly paycheque can be variable or stop altogether and with that comes stress particularly if you have a family,.
Suffice to say I'm no longer self employed - I happily traded being my own master for a regular income doing meh jobs that might not be interesting but I can tolerate the boredom, though obviously everyone has different priorities.
Realistic expectations (Score:2)
My grandpa was a coal miner. He died of silicosis.
I get to do physically-undemanding stuff sitting behind a desk in a warm office for a living. I earn 10 times what my Grandpa used to earn.
You know what? When it feels meaningless or not fulfilling enough, I remind myself that I could be filling my lungs full of coal dust at work.
Here's my take: I take pride in what I do. Whatever I'm asked to do, I'll do it to the best of my abilities. If you ask me to do QA, I'll be the best QA engineer there is. If you as