Study Finds Most Fulfilling Jobs: Self-Employment, Government Work, Managing, and Social Service

"Envy the lumberjacks, for they perform the happiest, most meaningful work on earth," the Washington Post wrote almost two years ago, after analyzing more than 13,000 journals from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' time-use survey. (For the first time the surveys asked how workers felt during the day.) And outdoor forestry jobs "look awesome by that metric, dangerous as they often are in the long run," the Post wrote in a recent follow-up. [Alternate URL.] But is that really the right metric? "Readers kept reminding us that there's more to a fulfilling job than how happy you are while doing it." What about those wanting jobs where they're meaningfully impacting the world? We didn't have a stellar way to measure other feelings about work, but we kept our eye on an often-overlooked federal data provider: AmeriCorps. The independent agency, which CEO Michael D. Smith described to us as "bite-sized" but "punching well above our weight," funds the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, part of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey... In 2021 and again in 2023, the researchers behind the CEV asked if you agree or disagree with these four statements: - I am proud to be working for my employer. - My main satisfaction in life comes from work. - My workplace contributes to the community. - I contribute to the community through my work.... The workers most likely to say they're proud to be working for their employer and that they gain satisfaction from work are — surprise! — the self-employed. The self-employed who are incorporated — a group that often includes small-business owners — are almost twice as likely as private-sector, for-profit workers to strongly profess pride in their employer. Government and nonprofit workers fall somewhere in the middle on those questions. But they rank at the very top on "My workplace contributes to the community" and "I contribute to the community through my work." Local government workers, who include teachers, take the top spot for strong agreement on both, followed by nonprofit workers. Private-sector, for-profit workers once again lag behind. The jobs that do worse on these measures tend to be in manufacturing or other blue-collar production and extraction jobs, or at the lower-paid end of the service sector. Folks in food services (e.g., bartenders and food prep), janitorial roles and landscaping, and personal services (e.g., barbershops, laundry and hotels) all struggle to find greater meaning in their work. Though some better-paid service jobs also struggle by some measures — think sales, engineering or software development. On the questions regarding pride in your employer and life satisfaction, we see managers and our old friends in agriculture and forestry take the top spots. But right behind them — and actually in the lead in the other question — lurks the real standout, a set of jobs we'd classify as "care and social services." That includes, most notably, religious workers. Looking a bit deeper at about 100 occupations for which we have detailed data, we see clergy were most likely to strongly agree on every question. Other observations from the article: "As a rule, you feel better about your job as you get older. Presumably, it's some mix of people who love their work delaying retirement, people job-hopping until they find meaningful employment, and people learning to love whatever hand they've been dealt." "Most measures of satisfaction also rise with education, often quite sharply. Someone with a graduate degree is twice as likely as a high school dropout to strongly agree their workplace contributes to the community." But... "More-educated folks are actually a bit less likely to strongly agree that work is their main satisfaction in life."

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