Current attitudes show that job satisfaction is, as expected, mostly affected by one’s income and education – the better educated or well-paid a person is, the more satisfaction the job brings. Other demographic characteristics like gender or age seem to have little impact on people’s attitudes towards their work.
In some African counties for instance people who say they are satisfied with their job are a minority (31%), and those who are not are about a half of all respondents. In India the share (49%) of those who are satisfied with their job is also relatively low compared to the rest of the world. Most happy with their job on the other hand are people in Europe (both EU and Non-EU countries), USA, West Asia, but also Latin America, where shares of people happy with what they do reaches up to 70%.
Not so happy about the wage
Remuneration satisfaction is not necessarily related to job attitudes. One can be happy with a job, and still not satisfied with what they get from it, and vice versa. Shares of remuneration satisfaction are traditionally lower. The current wave of polling shows that almost half (47%) of working people around the world is happy with their payment, near a third (31%) is however not satisfied and 19% of the respondents are “neither/nor”.
At the end of 2018 half (49%) of world’s population were happy with their salary, 29% were not and 21% were neutral. Thus, attitudes remain stable despite the years of COVID, war outbreaks and economic uncertainty around the world.
Current results also show that male respondents are slightly happier with their remuneration than female. Younger people are also a bit happier with their wage than older generations. Age and gender however play a small role in remuneration satisfaction compared to income and education which again seem to be dominant predictor for people’s attitudes.
Worldwide societies in wealthier countries and regions show notably higher shares of personal satisfaction with wage. Huge countries like India and regions Africa again stand out with smallest shares of people happy with their payment – between 20% and 30%. Western societies (Europe – both EU and Non-EU countries), USA, and again Latin America rank highest in people’s satisfaction with wage.