The most – and least – satisfying jobs out there, according to science

Scientists have uncovered the most satisfying jobs, after analysing 59,000 people and 263 occupations.

Kätlin Anni at the University of Tartu in Estonia and her colleagues dived into data from the Estonian Biobank, doing what they say is probably the most comprehensive and rigorous study yet on satisfaction differences between jobs.

While donating blood for the biobank project, all the participants completed a survey that asked about details of their job, salary, personality and their satisfaction with various aspects of life.

Anni and her colleagues used these details to score the various jobs and found that those that seem to give the most fulfilment include clergy, various medical professions and writing. Jobs that appear to make people the least satisfied include working in kitchens, transport, storage and manufacturing, and being a survey interviewer or sales worker.

In terms of overall life satisfaction, rather than just feelings about their careers, being a medical professional, psychologist, special-needs teacher, a sheet-metal worker or ships engineer rated highly, unlike being a security guard, survey interviewer, waiter, sales worker, mail carrier, carpenter or chemical engineer.

Various factors seemed to contribute to satisfaction, but perhaps surprisingly, higher income didn’t correlate with it strongly, nor did the prestige of a job.

“I was expecting the job prestige to be more associated with satisfaction, but there was only a slight correlation,” says Anni. “Jobs with a higher sense of achievement are associated with higher satisfaction and even lower-prestige jobs can be quite fulfilling.”

Low-satisfaction jobs often had a stressful factor, she says – for example, having a very structured role with a lot of responsibility, like being a manager in a large company. This could also explain why being self-employed rated highly, because these people have the independence or opportunity to regulate their work days, says Anni.

She thinks these general patterns are probably relevant elsewhere, but says caution should be taken about generalising the findings too broadly, because there might be cultural norms in Estonia that influence how people experience their jobs.