How happy you are varies, depending not only on what kind of job you have — if you have one — but also where in the world you live.
Related: 10 states with the happiest workers
That's according to the results of the World Happiness Report, released annually to coincide with the United Nation's International Day of Happiness and drawing on data from the Gallup World Poll. In fact, certain jobs have a substantially higher level of happiness, even when taking into account "differences in income and education as well as a number of other demographic variables like age, gender, and marital status," the authors write.
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In an article in the Harvard Business Review by the study's authors, one consistent finding is that "unemployment is destructive to people's well-being."
In fact, they add, that's not only true around the world but the effects persist over time. "The employed evaluate the quality of their lives much more highly on average as compared to the unemployed," the authors write, adding, "Individuals who are unemployed also report around 30 percent more negative emotional experiences in their day-to-day lives."
In addition, the nonmonetary aspects of employment are "key drivers of people's well-being" — with such factors as social status, social relations, daily structure, and goals all contributing to whether people are happy and how happy they are.
That said, the "happiest" jobs, out of 11 broad categories, are not blue-collar, labor-intensive jobs such as those in the fields of construction, mining, manufacturing, transport, farming, fishing and forestry, but white-collar office jobs such as manager, executive, official, professional worker or business owner — although that last category can encounter bumps in the road to happiness. White-collar workers evaluate the quality of their lives at a little over 6 out of 10, whereas people in blue-collar jobs evaluate their lives around 4.5 out of 10 on average.
And self-employment, the authors say, is "complicated." Its effects on overall well-being, in most developed nations, are associated both with higher overall life evaluation and with more negative, daily emotions such as stress and worry.
Where are workers happiest? Those who report they are "satisfied," as opposed to "dissatisfied," are more often found in countries across North and South America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. "Specifically," the study finds, "Austria takes the top spot with 95 percent of respondents reporting being satisfied with their jobs. Austria is followed closely by Norway and Iceland."
And for employers concerned with employee engagement, the study finds that despite high degrees of job satisfaction, engagement can be pretty low. Responses to the Gallup World Poll question about whether individuals feel "actively engaged," "not engaged," or "actively disengaged" in their jobs indicate that, despite relatively high job satisfaction numbers, the number of people responding that they are actively engaged is "typically less than 20 percent, while being around 10 percent in Western Europe, and much less still in East Asia," the authors write.
They add that the difference in results on job satisfaction and on employee engagement can be because the two measure different aspects of happiness at work. While the former "can perhaps be reduced to feeling content with one's job," the latter requires a whole other level of commitment and is harder to achieve.
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