Labor Day: Workers On Their Jobs

It’s Labor Day weekend, a time when politicians and pollsters focus on the well-being of American worker. Poll-based metrics in this area are valuable not only for assessing current attitudes, but also for what they tell us about workers’ priorities. Fortunately, two polls, one by Gallup and another by the Conference Board, provide long-term trends. Gallup has been asking about worker attitudes yearly since 1999 and has scattered earlier points. The Conference Board has been doing the same for nearly four decades.

Gallup’s yearly polling covers more than a dozen areas. The Conference Board asks about 26 specific job aspects, and, like Gallup, has an overall job satisfaction question. While using different measures, their questions provide similar overall impressions. Most American workers are highly satisfied with their work, workplaces, colleagues, and even their bosses. Pay and benefits, meanwhile, don’t rate as highly.

In Gallup’s 2023 poll, 91% of employed adults were completely (50%) or somewhat (41%) somewhat satisfied with their jobs. Only 8% were somewhat or completely dissatisfied. In the 2023 Conference Board survey, 63% reported overall job satisfaction, the highest response in the 37-year series, although specific job characteristics were down slightly in many areas. In Pew’s 2023 assessment, 14% were extremely satisfied with their jobs, 37% very satisfied, 37% somewhat satisfied, 9% not too satisfied, and 3% not at all satisfied. The low levels of dissatisfaction across these surveys is striking.

What can we learn from the polls’ questions on specific job characteristics?

*Employed people are most satisfied with their workplace cultures – things such as relationships with coworkers. Workers are even generally satisfied with their bosses or supervisors. A separate Pew survey found that 54% of employed people thought their companies were paying about the right amount of attention to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion at their workplaces, 14% too little, and 15% too much. Other surveys show that DEI efforts rank low on the list of what workers want in their own jobs. Salaries, benefits, and flexibility are more important.

*Satisfaction with pay and benefits always trail satisfaction with workplace environments. Today, negative assessments of the economy as a whole may be depressing attitudes on some job characteristics. Still, in Gallup’s latest, only 13% were very dissatisfied with what they earned.

*Employed Americans are reasonably confident of their own job security. Those numbers dipped to a low point in the Great Recession but have been more positive since.

*People are generally satisfied with the safety of their workplaces. Concern about safety rose during the pandemic, but employed people were far more concerned about safety fifty or 60 years ago.

* Flexibility is very important to workers. In Gallup’s latest survey, 88% were satisfied with the flexibility of their hours. Gallup added a new category in 2022, and two-thirds were satisfied with their ability to work remotely. In 2023, that response was 58%.

*In 2010, Gallup reported that on the job stress was workers’ biggest complaint. Their polling and other surveys show that this doesn’t seem to be as much of a concern today.

*In terms of demographic differences, women are generally less highly satisfied than men with their jobs. The surveys suggest several possible reasons. In Pew’s survey, more women than men say they face discrimination at work, although this response is fairly low. Most women report that they are paid the same as men in their workplaces, but national headlines on the wage gap likely depress their views of women’s job experiences nationally. It is also possible that some women would prefer not to work. In Gallup’s 2019 survey, 56% of women say they would prefer to work outside the home. A substantial 39% prefer to stay home and take care of the house and family.

*Young people tend to be less satisfied with where they are in their jobs than older workers, but they are often more optimistic about their prospects. This is a function of where they are in the life cycle.

So, workers are pretty happy these days with their jobs. It’s important, of course, for companies to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own work places, and focusing on improvements may contribute to retention, and healthier bottom lines. But putting individual company studies in the context of the work force as a whole is also important. And here the news is mostly good. Enjoy Labor Day.