How satisfaction varies among 263 occupations

Despite theoretical reasons to think that occupation plays a role in life satisfaction (LS), empirical evidence on the association is surprisingly limited. Moreover, because LS closely tracks personality traits, not controlling for these has left the existing results inconclusive. In pre-registered analyses, we examined occupational differences in LS and job satisfaction (JS) among 59,000 Estonian Biobank participants who represented 263 occupations, controlling for demographic variables and comprehensively assessed personality traits. Jobs differed in LS and JS before (η2 = .05 and η2 = .07, respectively) and even after adjusting for all covariates (η2 = .01 to .02 and η2 = .06, respectively). Various medical professionals, psychologists, special needs teachers, and self-employed individuals tended to have the highest LS levels, whereas security guards, survey interviewers, waiters, sales workers, mail carriers, carpenters, and chemical engineers tended to score the lowest. Jobs with the highest JS included religious professionals, various medical professionals, and authors, while kitchen, transport, storage, and manufacturing labourers, survey interviewers, and sales workers were among the least satisfied with their jobs. Exploratory analyses suggested that income and O*NET-derived job characteristics, such as interest orientations like realistic, enterprising, and conventional, could explain some of the satisfaction variance among occupations. We conclude that occupation ranks among satisfaction’s strongest correlates, besides, and partly net of, personality traits.