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We are getting ever happier with our jobs

Dean Baker pointed me today to a very peculiar chart:

Why peculiar? According to the Conference Board, job satisfaction declined steadily and by a large amount for more than 20 years from 1987-2010. Then it abruptly turned around and has risen steadily and by a large amount for the past 12 years from 2010-2022.

Why would this be the case? Job satisfaction seems to have nothing to do with recessions and nothing much to do with economic conditions in general. It wasn't improved by the dotcom boom and it wasn't hurt by the COVID pandemic. It just motored along.

Right now, job satisfaction is allegedly at its highest point in 35 years. This isn't because of Bidenomics or Trumpenomics or the Great Resignation or remote work or any of that. We've just been getting happier with our jobs every single year since 2010.

Why?

POSTSCRIPT: I should mention that Gallup's poll of job satisfaction is basically dead flat for this entire period. So maybe there's something wrong with the Conference Board's methodology? Or with Gallup's?

6 thoughts on “We are getting ever happier with our jobs

  1. QuakerInBasement

    Could it be generational? Baby boomers started reaching full retirement age in 2010. As they aged and approached retirement, they became increasingly dissatisfied as they began to realize their ride was ending. After 2010, the percentage of boomers in the work force declined with retirements. Workers remaining weren't so cranky.

    It's a theory.

    1. jdubs

      The boomers we're my theory as well. For further evidence, look at the trajectory of the GOP as the boomers aged out of the workforce, retired and became the dominant voting bloc. The angry boomers didn't suddenly become dissatisfied with life, they've always been this way.

  2. E-6

    If record numbers of people are happy with their jobs, it seems a little weird that there's so much grumbling about the economy, according to polling. Are high gas prices that dominant in peoples' minds?

  3. drickard1967

    Betcha Kevin digs into the numbers, discovers that job satisfaction is tied to working from hope/flexible schedules... and starts screaming about how high job satisfaction is a bad thing.

  4. kaleberg

    If you try and tie it to maco-economic conditions, you get a slow decline in the 80s followed by a steeper decline in the early 90s recession. I remember that as pretty brutal. There was the Clinton recovery which didn't really take off until the late 90s. It's hard to say what happened during the W years. There was a housing boom, but that shouldn't have gotten everyone less satisfied at work. The recession at the start of the 00s barely shows, but then the 2007 collapse hit followed by the long, slow Obama recovery. It's not a great fit.

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