If you seek happiness, try captaining a ship or tiling walls for a living. But choose to be a judge, a housing officer or a theme park attendant, and prepare for a measure of misery.
Groundbreaking research into UK employees’ “full earnings”, which tries to account for wellbeing as well as cash income, has revealed the jobs where the reality of the working day undermines the benefit of salary and those that offer the greatest rewards in addition to salary.
The study, by leading academics from the London and Paris schools of economics, suggests the best jobs are marked by autonomy and provide satisfaction from completing tasks, while the worst include roles where workers are assailed by others’ problems – whether customer service, administrators or welfare officers.
It also claims that if wellbeing is factored in, income inequality in the UK – already the worst in western Europe – is a third wider than previously believed, creating a hidden “real income” gap.
“The people who do worst out of this widening gap tend to be women and ethnic minorities and the winners tend to be white men,” said Andrew Clark, professor at the Paris School of Economics.
The study was co-authored by Maria Cotofan and Prof Richard Layard, the Labour peer who pioneered “happiness economics” and is co-editor of the World Happiness Report, which ranks the UK the 24th happiest country in terms of average life satisfaction.
Academics monitoring wellbeing in Europe and the US are growing increasingly concerned that conventional economic measures – such as gross domestic product (GDP) – underestimate the extent of social divisions, which in turn threaten political stability. They note that anti-government protests have surged in recent years in the UK, US, France, Italy and Spain, and analysis showed voters’ feelings about their income were a far better predictor of whether they voted for or against Brexit than actual income.
Topping the “full earnings” chart are chief executives and elected representatives such as MPs. Construction and building trade supervisors, plasterers, floorers, wall tilers and decorators are also close to the top because of their reported life satisfaction, despite earning less in cash. Pilots, flight engineers and ship and hovercraft officers join sports coaches and fitness instructors among other high earners when wellbeing is factored in.
The jobs where a lack of happiness brings down full earnings include call centre workers, lawyers, IT support workers, local government administrators and hospital porters, kitchen assistants, bar staff, waiting staff and theme park attendants.
“Occupation is one of the most important decisions that individuals make,” concludes the study.
Clark said workers who have autonomy, management roles, mastery of a skill or work in public service tend to have higher full earnings.
“Working in health and education brings a kind of reward in terms of doing good,” he said. “Sales and customer service are terrible. There must be very little intrinsic reward to selling things.’
The study used the ONS’s Annual Population Survey data from 2014-18 relating to full-time employees aged 18 to 65 – a sample of 210,000 people. These people were asked to rate their “life satisfaction” on a scale of 0-10 from “not at all satisfied” to “completely satisfied”. Earnings were measured as real hourly earnings and each person was given one of 90 different occupation categories.
“Some low-paid occupations such as customer service, shop assistants, and low-skilled labourers also have the worst non-pecuniary aspects, resulting in full earnings that are lower than actual earnings,” the researchers found. “Some elementary construction and agricultural workers have higher full earnings once the value of amenities is taken into account.” This latter finding may suggest the benefits of working outdoors.
The findings suggest satisfaction is also gained from seeing a job finished – something enjoyed on a regular basis by decorators and tilers. Their building site colleagues, steel erectors, bricklayers and carpenters had lower full earnings. They also suggest the negative impact of largely reactive jobs like call centre operators and kitchen porters.
People with degrees had higher full earnings than those with only A-levels, GCSEs or lower qualifications. Average life satisfaction also varies less for more high-educated people, reflecting greater wellbeing inequality for the less-educated.
Ways to reduce the hard cash inequality include taxation and raising the minimum wage, while strengthening trade unions could help with broader wellbeing if they are successful in improving broader working conditions, Clark said.
Three people share what they get out of their work
Cruise ship captain: ‘The bridge will go orange and red with the sun’
“Sitting on the bridge on sea days is breathtaking,” said Robert Camby, a captain for P&O who has spent 27 years in the cruise ship business and is about to helm the Arvia, a new 5,500-guest behemoth cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean. “You will get turquoise waters, crystal clear blue skies. We sometimes head directly into the sunset and the bridge will go orange and red with the sun.”
Captaining the ship was like “boys with their toys”, he said – although he stressed there were female captains, too. “We also get to work with a massively diverse team. We have 50 nationalities and we get to understand so many cultures”.
The job is also as managing director of the ship, with its theatres, spas, kitchens, engine rooms and 1,800 crew. To the passengers the captain is something of a celebrity, making appearances opening shops and events. “It’s like walking around your own town and you are the mayor,” he said.
The main challenge is the weather and he recently had to evade nine-metre swells caused by Storm Eunice. “It was pretty horrific in terms of the wind,” he said, but he got the ship safely to Southampton.
Overall, he said, the job was “extremely rewarding”.
Decorator: ‘I really enjoy finishing off the properties’
Hanging £600-a-roll wallpaper in the homes of footballers and old-money millionaires can be a stressful business; any mistake can cost a small fortune. But the satisfaction of a job well done is huge, says Adam Bown, 38. He runs Divine Decorators of Cheshire, which applies the finishing touches to million-pound refits of homes in the county’s affluent “golden triangle”.
“The room transformation is a really satisfying part of the job,” he said, adding that he understood why decorators ranked so high in the wellbeing charts. “A lot of what we do is seen. Nobody really appreciates a boiler on the wall, but they will appreciate nice wallpaper.”
Bown has painted and decorated for footballers including David Beckham and Sergio Agüero. He said: “I really enjoy finishing off the properties. It’s a nice business to be in; not too physical, but it’s enough to keep you fit. It’s quite detailed work and I really enjoy having a good relationship with my customers.”
Kitchen porter: ‘My family is my main thing’
Emptying the overflowing bins was the worst part of the job for Keilon Richardson, 25, when he worked as a kitchen porter at the Fat Duck. He worked 11-hour shifts, washing dishes, compacting boxes and cleaning at Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray.
Despite being one of the most thankless jobs in catering – George Orwell described kitchen porters as “slaves of the modern world” – Richardson was not unhappy, even when confronted by the most encrusted pan a chef had “really messed up”.
“I never dreaded going to work,” he said. “As long as the amount of work was reasonable I would focus on the people around me.” He enjoyed getting recipes from the chefs – pasta and rubs for ribs, rather than the restaurant’s celebrated specialities like snail porridge – and trying them on his family at home.
“Work is a necessary process,” he said. “My family is my main thing. Every job I take, I take it with them in mind.”
