ML-Implode News - American Workers -- Even Well-To-Do Ones -- Increasingly Miserable

even in a boom economy, a surprising portion of Americans are professionally miserable right now. In the mid-1980s, roughly 61 percent of workers told pollsters they were satisfied with their jobs. Since then, that number has declined substantially, hovering around half; the low point was in 2010, when only 43 percent of workers were satisfied, according to data collected by the Conference Board, a nonprofit research organization. The rest said they were unhappy, or at best neutral, about how they spent the bulk of their days. Even among professionals given to lofty self-images, like those in medicine and law, other studies have noted a rise in discontent. Why? Based on my own conversations with classmates and the research I began reviewing, the answer comes down to oppressive hours, political infighting, increased competition sparked by globalization, an "always-on culture" bred by the internet -- but also something that's hard for these professionals to put their finger on, an underlying sense that their work isn't worth the grueling effort they're putting into it.
This wave of dissatisfaction is especially perverse because corporations now have access to decades of scientific research about how to make jobs better. "We have so much evidence about what people need," says Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (and a contributing opinion writer at The Times). Basic financial security, of course, is critical -- as is a sense that your job won't disappear unexpectedly. What's interesting, however, is that once you can provide financially for yourself and your family, according to studies, additional salary and benefits don't reliably contribute to worker satisfaction. Much more important are things like whether a job provides a sense of autonomy -- the ability to control your time and the authority to act on your unique expertise. People want to work alongside others whom they respect (and, optimally, enjoy spending time with) and who seem to respect them in return.

And finally, workers want to feel that their labors are meaningful. "You don't have to be curing cancer," says Barry Schwartz, a visiting professor of management at the University of California, Berkeley. We want to feel that we're making the world better, even if it's as small a matter as helping a shopper find the right product at the grocery store. "You can be a salesperson, or a toll collector, but if you see your goal as solving people's problems, then each day presents 100 opportunities to improve someone's life, and your satisfaction increases dramatically," Schwartz says.

This was a predictable consequence of an increasingly unstable, insecure economy. There is really no refuge from it; even the rich know they have to always be searching for the next "score" (the middle class and below obviously have it even worse -- but with the meso-rich feeling the pain, at least the problem is becoming impossible to ignore). At this site, this is the sort of thing we've expected as a consequence of the long-run gutting of the financial economy, with low interest rates and disincentives to save and invest in long-term, stable enterprises (VC money and credit cards are NOT a suitable substitute for traditional commercial and merchant banking).

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American Workers -- Even Well-To-Do Ones -- Increasingly Miserable