Work

The Changing Distribution of Job Satisfaction

Year: 2001

Type: article

Abstract: The distribution of job satisfaction widened across cohorts of young men in the U.S. between 1978 and 1988, and between 1978 and 1996, in ways correlated with changing wage inequality. Satisfaction among workers in upper earnings quantiles rose relative to that of workers in lower quantiles. An identical phenomenon is observed among men in West Germany in response to a sharp increase in the relative earnings of high-wage men in the mid-1990s. Several hypotheses about the determinants of satisfaction are presented and examined using both cross-section data on these cohorts and panel data from the NLSY and the German SOEP. The evidence is most consistent with workers regret about the returns to their investment in skills affecting their satisfaction. Job satisfaction is especially responsive to surprises in the returns to observable skills, less so to surprises in the returns to unobservables; and the effects of earnings shocks on job satisfaction dissipate over time.

Source: The Journal of Human Resources

DOI: 10.2307/3069668

Author: Daniel S. Hamermesh

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, The University of Texas at Austin

Language: English

Topic: Labor market dynamics and wage inequality

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Decent work and economic growth, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funder: Sage Foundation