How Happy Are Workers? Polls On Workplace Satisfaction

Labor Day is a few days away, and news accounts include familiar stories about worker dissatisfaction. Many of these reports give a false and incomplete picture of the workers’ views about their jobs and workplaces.

Americans aren’t happy about the economy’s direction, and poll ratings about Donald Trump’s handling of it are among his lowest. What is more concerning politically is that most Americans expect things to get worse. Still, by many different measures of what work and workplaces are like every day, Americans who have jobs this Labor Day express considerable satisfaction.

Happy Workers? In the mid-August Economist/YouGov poll, 25% of those with jobs said they were very happy with them, while 40% were happy. Just 7% were unhappy and 3% very unhappy. What stands out in this poll and many others is the low level of job dissatisfaction nationwide. In Gallup’s latest, 48% of adults employed full- or part-time said they were completely satisfied with their job and another 38% were somewhat satisfied. Just 10% were somewhat dissatisfied, and 3% completely dissatisfied. Over the past decade, no more than 13% of those surveyed have said they were somewhat or very dissatisfied with their jobs. Pew, uses a different scale from Gallup’s and also finds a very low level of dissatisfaction. Fifteen percent in their most recent poll were extremely satisfied with their job, 35% very satisfied, 38% somewhat satisfied, 9% not too, and 2% not at all satisfied.

Job Specifics: The response “completely satisfied” is a very high bar, yet Gallup finds that majorities of adults employed full- or part-time are completely satisfied with the safety of their workplaces (70%), their relations with coworkers (67%), the flexibility of their hours (63%), their boss (60%), their job security (57%), the amount of vacation time they receive (54%), the amount of work required of them (54%), and the recognition they receive at work (52%).

It is hardly surprising that there is more concern about pay and benefits, but here, too, the responses deflate the narrative of disgruntled workers. Thirty-six percent in Gallup’s most recent poll were completely satisfied with their health insurance, and another 28% are somewhat satisfied. Thirty-five percent are completely satisfied with their retirement plans, with another 32% are somewhat so. Thirty-one percent are even completely satisfied with the money they earn, and another 44% are somewhat satisfied. For each of these three items, only around 10% were completely dissatisfied.

Perhaps more impressive than a single year’s responses are Gallup’s trends on all of these items. The organization has asked the identical questions yearly since 2001, and the results are remarkable stable and positive.

Pew measures attitudes to job features that are similar to Gallup’s. Their five-part response scale produces lower “extremely” satisfied responses than Gallup’s “completely” satisfied ones. In both polls, though, job dissatisfaction is low. No more than 13 percent said they were “not at all satisfied” with any of the 10 items Pew has been tracking.

The 11^th item, the ability to work remotely, produces a greater degree dissatisfaction. Twenty-eight percent told Pew they are not at all satisfied with this aspect of their jobs. In Gallup’s survey, 14% were completely dissatisfied with this. Polls show that people prefer a hybrid arrangement if it is possible.

There are differences in the way demographic groups respond to these questions. Higher income workers and whites are generally more satisfied than lower income and black workers. Young people, just starting out and at the bottom of the income ladder, are often more dissatisfied than older workers with job features such as pay. But they are usually more optimistic than older people about their long-term prospects- their dissatisfaction is an indicator of where they are in the lifecycle. And today with high unemployment for new labor force entrants, many of whom are young, is a particularly difficult time.

Trends show us that some workplace concerns disappear and new ones arise. Gallup still asks people about the safety of their workplaces. Most workers today are highly confident about this, but that wasn’t the case in the1960s or before. In Roper Starch Worldwide data from the 1970s about the purpose of work, the importance of more leisure time was becoming clear, and the idea of work-life balance was born. Employees seem to be satisfied with the flexibility of their schedules, but recent polls like the ones above show dissatisfaction about being able to work remotely.

Pollsters and consultants make a bundle of money telling corporations what their workers want, and tailored approaches are no doubt useful for companies in a competitive business environment. What they shouldn’t obscure is the solid finding that most workers are happy with most features of their jobs. Happy Labor Day.