A good salary does not (always) buy happiness. So says a survey of 1,000 U.S. employees by Eventboard, a Salt Lake City-based workplace meeting software company.
Those making above $75,000 a year were actually slightly less likely to report being happy or very happy in their current position than those making less.
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Millennials, perhaps out of youthful naiveté, appear to be happier than other generations with their jobs, with 58 percent saying they are "very happy" in their current roles. That's despite the fact that, according to other studies, millennials are almost always on the lookout for other jobs and are hardly committed to their current employer for good.
Last month, a survey by the Conference Board, an economic research group, found that just under half of U.S. employees reported being satisfied in their jobs. The 49.6 percent satisfaction rate might be a slight improvement over the 48.3 percent reported in a similar survey two years ago, but it's within the survey's margin of error.
That study found that those who make over $125,000 a year were happier (61 percent) than those in lower income categories. It also found that workers were most likely to express dissatisfaction with the way their employer reviewed their performance, dealt with promotions and recognized their work.
Research typically shows that happiness rises with income up until a certain point and then plateaus. A 2010 study found that $75,000 was the point above which income increases stopped leading to greater happiness.
The Conference Board survey also found that job satisfaction tended to be higher in the western U.S., with Texas workers the most likely to be happy (56.1 percent).
Although there is a great deal of debate over whether it is realistic to expect everybody to seek and find a job that they find emotionally rewarding, there is no shortage of evidence that points to a number of consistent characteristics that satisfied workers share.
As discussed in a recent New York Times feature piece on happy workers by economist Robert Frank, employees who believe in their employer's mission are much more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.
Frank recalled asking a large group of Cornell University students for whom they would prefer to work if offered an identical position for the same pay: The American Cancer Society or a tobacco company? Nearly 90 percent say the Cancer Society, and the average pay increase the tobacco company would have to offer to get them to change their mind was a whopping 80 percent.
"When most people leave work each evening, they feel better if they have made the world better in some way, or at least haven't made it worse," he writes.
But workers are most likely to be truly happy, argued Frank, if their job is related to something they are an expert in. That's because you need to spend thousands of hours of your own time on a certain activity before becoming an expert on it. And you usually don't devote that much time to something you don't love.
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