Measuring job satisfaction in surveys - Comparative analytical report
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Data and trends at international and EU level
According to the European Commission in its review on the progress on quality in work in 2003,
‘despite the strong employment performance observed in European labour markets in the second half of the 1990s, recent data on the evolution of job satisfaction and job quality … over this period do not indicate significant changes in quality in work. Only in Greece and Portugal was there a significant decrease in the share of employees expressing low satisfaction with their type of work. On the other hand, job satisfaction seems to have deteriorated somewhat in Italy in the 1996-2000 period. In 2000, in the EU overall, around 20% of all employees still declared themselves dissatisfied with their job. Relatively high degrees of dissatisfaction in Greece, Italy and Spain contrast with very high shares (90% or more) of employees who are satisfied with their job in Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and, most notably, Austria’ ( Employment in Europe 2003, analysis based on the ECHP) .
The EWCS also provide data for 1995 and 2000. From this data - not entirely consistent with the ECHP data - the overall score of job satisfaction seems to have remained at the same high level (84%) for those reporting that they were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with working conditions in their jobs. However, the proportion of satisfied employees declined in nine of the EU15 Member States during that five-year period. As Figure 1 shows, the only exceptions were Denmark, Finland, the UK, Austria, Germany and Greece, where the proportion of satisfied workers slightly increased. Somewhat contradicting the ECHP data, the proportion of employees expressing low satisfaction increased in Portugal from 16.2% in 1995 to 19.7% in 2000.
As a continuation of its 2000 survey, in 2001, the Foundation carried out the same working conditions survey in the new Member States - Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia - as well as Bulgaria and Romania. Its figures reveal that, in those countries, the levels of satisfied workers are below the EU15 average of 2000: overall, the proportion of employees expressing satisfaction with their working conditions is 72.5%. Only Malta and Hungary exceed a proportion of 80% of satisfied workers.
Figure 1: Job satisfaction in 27 EU countries, 1995-2000 (% of employees expressing satisfaction with their working conditions)
Source: EWCS, 1995 and 2000; * 2001 figures
A recent study (Bauer, 2004), using a partial set of the EWCS 2000 data, analyses the distribution of job satisfaction across the EU15. According to this analysis, ‘relatively little variance could be observed across countries. Most workers state that they are fairly satisfied with the working conditions in their main job. The highest average level of job satisfaction could be observed in Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands. The lowest average job satisfaction is reported by workers in the southern European countries of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal’.
| Country | Not at all satisfied | Not very satisfied | Fairly satisfied | Very satisfied | Mean (standard deviation) | No. included in analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 1.0% | 10.6% | 49.9% | 38.5% | 2.258 (0.682) | 763 |
| Belgium | 3.2% | 9.4% | 56.1% | 31.3% | 2.155 (0.716) | 765 |
| Denmark | 1.1% | 3.9% | 41.2% | 53.8% | 2.475 (0.630) | 881 |
| Finland | 1.3% | 5.7% | 65.1% | 27.9% | 2.195 (0.593) | 607 |
| France | 4.8% | 17.5% | 60.2% | 17.5% | 1.904 (0.730) | 846 |
| Germany | 2.0% | 12.8% | 60.2% | 25.0% | 2.082 (0.673) | 891 |
| Greece | 5.1% | 26.1% | 54.8% | 14.0% | 1.777 (0.746) | 376 |
| Ireland | 0.8% | 4.9% | 44.5% | 49.8% | 2.433 (0.626) | 744 |
| Italy | 4.5% | 17.8% | 60.1% | 17.5% | 1.906 (0.726) | 652 |
| Luxembourg | 1.5% | 10.5% | 61.6% | 26.4% | 2.128 (0.644) | 286 |
| Netherlands | 2.1% | 9.6% | 40.3% | 48.0% | 2.341 (0.739) | 915 |
| Spain | 4.2% | 19.2% | 62.1% | 14.4% | 1.869 (0.698) | 762 |
| Portugal | 3.4% | 16.2% | 68.8% | 11.6% | 1.886 (0.634) | 687 |
| Sweden | 5.1% | 10.3% | 56.5% | 28.0% | 2.074 (0.764) | 719 |
| UK | 3.2% | 6.1% | 50.8% | 39.9% | 2.273 (0.717) | 799 |
| EU15 | 3.3% | 13.0% | 56.8% | 26.9% | 2.074 (0.724) | 10,693 |
Note: All self-employed individuals, civil servants, individuals older than 65 years as well as all individuals working in the non-profit sector, in agriculture, mining and the army were excluded from the original sample, as were individuals with missing information on one of the variables used. This led to a reduced final sample of 10,693 observations.
Source: Bauer, 2004, using EWCS 2000 data
Among other studies aimed at analysing the levels of job satisfaction by taking a cross-national approach, reference can be made to a paper (Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza, 2000) that used data for 21 countries of the 1997 Work Orientations dataset from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Among the findings of this analysis are the following:
- In all countries, the level of job satisfaction is remarkably high. Only a small fraction of workers are dissatisfied with their work (about 4% in Switzerland, about 10% in the United States of America (US) and 16% in Russia).
- Workers in Denmark reported the highest level of job satisfaction, while workers in Hungary reported the lowest level.
- All of the five east European countries considered (Hungary, Russia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic) were among the eight countries showing the lowest satisfaction levels.
- Japanese workers reported the third lowest level of job satisfaction.
- A comparison with the 1989 ISSP data reveals that job satisfaction declined in Germany and the US in the 1990s.
It is worth mentioning that there is no consensus about recent job satisfaction trends. From academic research, there are interesting claims and counterclaims about job satisfaction trends in the past decade. There is at least some evidence to suggest that there has been a decline in levels of reported job satisfaction, for example in the UK, Germany (see Green and Tsitsianis, 2005) and the US (see ‘US job satisfaction keeps falling, the Conference Board reports today’, The Conference Board, February 2005; see also Blanchflower and Oswald, 1999).
In many ways this comes as something of a surprise. The growing service orientation of the labour market, the decline of often more routine, industry-based jobs, increasing salary levels and other positive factors would perhaps lead one to expect the opposite trend. As Green and Tsitsianis (2005) comment, ‘any decline within a modern European nation might be regarded as surprising for an affluent economy with rising real wages. The resolution to this paradox might reside in changing aspects of jobs, whose effect on job satisfaction could have outweighed any beneficial effects of rising wages’.
Such changing aspects of jobs that may have a negative effect on overall satisfaction levels include increasing levels of job intensification, deteriorating work-life balance and increasing expectations on individuals in the workplace arising from greater competitive pressures and globalisation. Moreover, Llorente and Macías (2003) consider that ‘those workers in not very attractive jobs, but with few expectations regarding their possibility of changing jobs, probably end up, even if only for the sake of mental health, lowering their expectations and probably also increasing their declared level of job satisfaction.’ In fact, the opposite scenario may also be true: a shift in the expectations of workers themselves - towards increased expectations - may be responsible for decreased levels of job satisfaction in certain cases.
It should be emphasised that Rose attaches many caveats to any readings of data that purport to show a decline in job satisfaction. In his opinion, such findings derive as much from a superficial analysis of the data as from any real decrease in job satisfaction. In one piece of analysis (Rose, 2001, p. 31), he points out that, in the UK in the 1990s - based on British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data - job satisfaction in relation to extrinsic job factors (pay, etc) rose significantly, while job satisfaction with intrinsic job factors (the work itself) decreased. Overall, the two tendencies were inclined to cancel each other out, leaving only a small overall negative trend in job satisfaction.
His explanation for these divergent trends of different aspects of job satisfaction coincides with the analysis presented above: positive effects of higher wage levels are counterbalanced by declines in traditional, job quality-related, intrinsic aspects of work - such as increased intensification of tasks or stress.
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