Job satisfaction improves, but lower than ’80s

Bill Knight column for Thursday, Friday or Saturday, Oct. 5, 6 or 7           

U.S. workers’ satisfaction with our jobs has inched above the halfway point for the first time in 12 years, according to the Conference Board research group, but while that’s better than last year it’s way lower than the percentage of Americans who felt content with their work in 1987.

Currently, 50.8 percent of us express satisfaction with our jobs, compared to 61.1 percent 30 years ago, the Conference Board shows.

Maybe if people felt appreciated, we’d feel happier.

However, the lower figures may be a “new normal” we have to get used to. The transformation of labor in the United States has ranged from a decline in unions and increases in both income inequality and outsourcing of jobs, to corporations’ continuing emphasis on maximizing shareholder value, and the wholesale loss of the social compact between workers and employers as far as long-term employment.

“Is it going to go back to the 1987 or 1995 levels? We speculate that it won’t,” Conference Board/North America chief economist Gad Levanon told the Washington Post. “We do think we’ll see more improvement because we think the labor market is going to be tighter than usual as the Baby Boomers continue to retire in large numbers. But the U.S. labor market has changed in the past decades in a way that reduced job quality and job satisfaction.

“Some of the structural trends in the U.S. labor market that led to lower job satisfaction in recent decades, such as a shift to outsourcing low-skill jobs, are unlikely to reverse,” Levanon said. “A stronger labor market can only take us so far.”

Within jobs, our unhappiness is often triggered with issues that can tend to feel unfair. Employees give importance to workloads, communication channels available at work, and the recognition and acknowledgement we do (or don’t) receive. Factors that we’re least satisfied with are led by recognition/acknowledgement (34.3 percent), the performance-review process (31.2 percent), educational/job training programs (30.8 percent), bonus plans (25.5 percent) and promotion policies (25.4 percent).

The Conference Board’s Job Satisfaction Survey is an annual measure of satisfaction from U.S. workers’ perspectives. Results are based on workers’ perceptions of their roles and workplace environments. The survey – part of the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey – asks about  23 aspects of jobs, such as health-care coverage, relations with co-workers and supervisors, and even commuting.

A year ago this week, a Pew Research Center report on how Americans view their jobs foreshadowed the Conference Board findings, and its highlight was on how a job has become less of a calling with meaning for a worker than a vocation that puts food on the table.

About half of U.S. workers describe their jobs as a career; 18 percent say it is a stepping stone to a career; about 30 percent say their job is “just a job to get them by,” Pew said.

Further, Americans are divided over whether their jobs just provide a living or give them a sense of identity, Pew added. About half (51 percent) of employed Americans said they get a sense of identity from their job, while the other half (47 percent) said their job is just what they do to earn money.

The share of U.S. workers saying their jobs give them a sense of identity has dropped since the question was first asked by Gallup in 1989. Then, 57 percent of employed adults said their job gave them a sense of identity, Pew found it to be 51 percent..

Maybe feeling that our labor has meaning is the key. All work matters, of course, but if bosses or customers don’t contribute to the feeling, or if colleagues or unions aren’t there to remind us of our value, it’s difficult for the effort to do good work to overcome resentments about injustice.