Life and Job Satisfaction

The FINANCIAL — Two weeks ago we discovered that attitudes toward politics and political discussion can be factors in overall life satisfaction.

This week we’re going to further discuss life and job satisfaction, and how attitudes toward work and employment relate.  As it turns out, some attitudes relate to contentedness in life and work similarly, and others affect the two quite differently.

Each respondent was asked “how satisfied are you with your life,” and those who were employed at the time of the survey were asked “with your job.” Respondents were given a 1-10 scale with which to answer, where 1 was dissatisfied and 10 was satisfied.  Life and job satisfaction are predictably closely connected, with Georgians at the bottom of the list for both, having a country mean of 5.46 life satisfaction and a 6.77 job satisfaction.  Northern Ireland and Luxembourg were tied for the highest life satisfaction rates (7.88), but the Irish topped the list in job satisfaction with an 8.17 average score.

The Importance of Work — Respondents were also asked to agree or disagree with statements, including “work is a duty to society,” on a five point scale. 65% of the total sample agreed and 14% disagreed.  Georgians answered mostly the same as this average, 65% agreeing and 10% disagreeing.  More interesting, though, is how this attitude is relates to job satisfaction: those who agree that work is a duty are more likely to enjoy their jobs in general. However, the relationship to life satisfaction is a quite different: those with more extreme attitudes in either direction have higher means than those who answered “neither agree nor disagree.”

We gave respondents the same 5 point scale with which to agree with the statement, “Work always comes first.” The correlation we calculated couldn’t be more clear: those who say that work comes first are the least satisfied with their lives in general, but are the most satisfied with their jobs.  Likewise, those that feel that work is not their top priority are more satisfied with their lives than the mean, and less satisfied with their work.  This may be related to Georgians’ disparately low life satisfaction, in that Georgians were far more likely to agree with this statement than the average.  However, Kosovars were more dedicated to work and have much higher satisfaction rates.

The conclusions we can draw from these data are not as clear as from two weeks ago, when we discovered separate indications that politics and life satisfaction are poor bedfellows.  However, we can say that these data support the idea that those who are focused on work, who believe it is a duty and should come first, are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.  

Nationalist Employment — Finally we asked a few policy questions with a simpler three point scale of agree, neither, or disagree.  One of the policies was “when jobs are scarce, employers should give priority to Georgians over immigrants.”  Here it seems that nationalism is related to dissatisfaction: those that agree were less likely to be content with their lives and work than those who believe that country of origin shouldn’t play a part.

For comparison, let’s consider what we learned two weeks ago: that finding specific groups of people undesirable as neighbors comes with lower life satisfaction.  This fact, along with what we’ve just seen regarding nationalist work policies, suggests that respondents who desire distance from, or employment priority over, groups other than their own are less satisfied with their lives and their work.  But then again, these cynical attitudes might be a result, rather than a cause.