Want career satisfaction and overall
happiness in your life? Pick the right occupation
A Wall Street Journal's survey found people who were both career-focused and
highly satisfied with their work. Then they tried to find out why they were so
pleased with their work life.
The "satisfying" jobs provided:
* Good intellectual stimulation
* Strong job security
* High level of control and freedom in what to do
* Extensive direct contact with customers/clients
Then they tried to find jobs
high in those characteristics. The resulting "best" careers:
* Curriculum and instructional
coordinators
* High-school special-education teachers
* Hospital and clinic managers
* Management consultants and analysts
* Medical researchers
* Physical therapists
* Sales, marketing and advertising managers
* Social workers, counselors and related managers
While "medical researcher"
isn't a likely second career for anyone whose first career wasn't also
medically-related, some of the other jobs hold promise for career changers.
Career Happiness/Satisfaction
Interesting Fact of the Day:
And how we know so much about career
happiness and satisfaction?
Thanks to new studies, we know a lot about what occupations have generally high levels of
happiness and satisfaction (such as clergy and fire fighters) and which have low
levels (e.g., roofers). The study is the work of the National
Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
Why does this matter?
There are plenty of sources of
information on the types of salaries you can expect depending on the career you
pick. Starting salaries are fairly easy to discern as are the salary levels all
of the way up the corporate ladder. But money does not buy happiness or
satisfaction, so it would be an enormous mistake to make it the dominant (or
worse the sole) factor in making a career decision. Ideally people would look
have data on the relative happiness and satisfaction levels of
different professions.
From the report:
Most American adults are
employed and their job is not only their main source of income, but also an
important life domain in other ways. Work occupies a large art of each worker’s
day, is one’s main source of social standing, helps to define who a person is,
and affects one’s health both physically and mentally. Because of
work’s central role in many people’s lives, satisfaction with one’s job is an
important component in overall well-being.
Who are the happiest workers?
The study showed that happiness
and satisfaction were not evenly distributed against occupations with some
occupations ranking significantly higher in happiness and satisfaction than
others. In other words, while some individuals could be happy in just about any
occupations and others would be unhappy regardless of their occupation, some
jobs have far more happy/satisfied people than others.
The top three jobs for
satisfaction were clergy (87 percent reporting being very satisfied),
firefighters (80 percent) and physical therapists (78 percent). Other top jobs,
in which more than 60 percent of the respondents said they were very satisfied
were education administrators, painters and sculpters, teachers, authors,
psychologists, special education teachers, operating engineers, office
supervisors and security and financial services salespersons.
The least satisfying jobs were
held by roofers, with only 25 percent of them saying they found their job
satisfying. The other low satisfaction jobs were held by waiters and servers,
laborers (except construction trades), bartenders, handpackers and packagers,
freight, stock and material handlers, apparel clothing salespersons, cashiers,
food preparers (excluding cooks and chefs), expeditors (customer service
representatives), butchers and meat cutters, and furniture and home furnishing
salespersons.
From the report:
Top Occupations in
Job Satisfaction
1 Clergy 87.2%
2 Physical Therapists 78.1%
3 Firefighters 80.1%
4 Education Administrators 68.4%
5 Painter, Sculptors, Related 67.3%
6 Teachers 69.2%
7 Authors 74.2%
8 Psychologists 66.9%
9 Special Education Teachers 70.1%
10 Operating Engineers 64.1%
11 Office Supervisors 60.8%
12 Security & Financial Services Salespersons 65.4%
Bottom Occupations
in Job Satisfaction
1 Roofers 25.3%
2 Waiters/Servers 27.0%
3 Laborers, Except Construction 21.4%
4 Bartenders 26.4%
5 Hand Packers and Packagers 23.7%
6 Freight, Stock, & Material Handlers 25.8%
7 Apparel Clothing Salespersons 23.9%
8 Cashiers 25.0%
9 Food Preparers, Misc. 23.6%
10 Expediters 37.0%
11 Butchers & Meat Cutters 31.8%
12 Furniture/Home Furnishing Salespersons 25.2%
In short, if you want to
improve your chances for lasting happiness and career satisfaction, then pick
the right career in the first place. Please note that not all people have the
same skills, interests or opportunities so the above numbers are just
guidelines. But just because it is aggregate data doesn't mean it should be
ignored. While it's just one piece of the puzzle, it's a key piece.
