Americans Hate Their Jobs More Than Ever

LiveScience Staff

Date: 26 February 2007 Time: 06:27 AM ET

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Americans hate their jobs more than ever before in the past 20 years, with fewer than half saying they are satisfied.

The trend is strongest among workers under the age of 25, less than 39 percent of whom are satisfied with their jobs.

Workers age 45 to 54 have the second lowest level of satisfaction (less than 45 percent), according a survey conducted by The Conference Board, a market information company that also puts out the Consumer Confidence Index and the Leading Economic Indicators.

Older people like their jobs more. Nearly half of all workers over 55 are satisfied with their employment situation.

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Unsettling trend

Overall, dissatisfaction has spread among all workers, regardless of age, income or residence. Twenty years ago, the first time the survey was conducted, 61 percent of all Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs, according to the representative survey of 5,000 U.S. households, said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center.

"Although a certain amount of dissatisfaction with one's job is to be expected, the breadth of dissatisfaction is somewhat unsettling, since it carries over from what attracts employees to a job to what keeps them motivated and productive on the job," Franco said.

Money rarely buys happiness but it can buy job satisfaction—people making under $15,000 per year reported the lowest satisfaction while those making more than $50,000 per year said they were the most satisfied.

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Location matters

People living in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are the most disgruntled (less than 41 percent say they are satisfied with their current job), and people living in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico were most likely to whistle while they work (56 percent reported being satisfied).

The thing that bugged most workers the most about their jobs were bonus plans and promotion policies. Workload and potential for growth were rated poorly also.

But the majority of workers polled found their work and co-workers interesting and their commute satisfying.