Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Happiest (and Unhappiest) Jobs in America

When you think of a cheerful job, you probably don’t think of loan officer, warehouse manager, or accountant. But it turns out these are some of the happiest careers in America, according to online jobs site Careerbliss.com. CareerBliss is a career community dedicated to helping people “find happiness in the workplace and therefore in life”. In essence they are career counselors and help people find jobs.

CareerBliss compiled a list of the happiest, and unhappiest, jobs based on analysis from more than 100,400 employee-generated reviews between February 2011 and January 2012. Employees were asked to rate 10 factors that affect workplace happiness, including one’s relationship with the boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and control over the work one does on a daily basis.

The employees valued each factor on a five-point scale, and also indicated how important it was to their overall happiness at work. The numbers were combined to find an average rating of overall employee happiness for each respondent, and then sorted by job title to find which occupations had the happiest workers. A minimum of 50 employee reviews was required to be considered for CareerBliss’ Happiest Jobs in America, and executive level jobs, like chief executive, were excluded from the study.

Below are the 10 Happiest and Unhappiest jobs found by CareerBliss in the country.