It’s no secret that some people love their jobs, while others are counting down the years, months and days (or even minutes and seconds) to retirement.
While there are probably almost as many reasons for that variation as there are workers, career test platform Sokanu decided to take a closer look. Sokanu reviewed the data from its career test, collected from over 250,000 workers across more than 250 career paths, and found the 10 states in the U.S. with the happiest workers.
While its data did not yield the reasons for their happiness — Climate? Career path? Salary range? A state’s culture or physical location? — the findings are nonetheless fascinating.
“The question of ‘to what degree geography is a factor in career satisfaction’ is a fascinating one,” Jørgen Hookham, UX designer, front-end engineer and project manager at Sokanu, said in the report. “Are there places in the world that simply have better philosophies or approaches that make our working lives better and more fulfilled?”
Hookham added, “What’s most interesting about this [study] is that it asks more questions than it answers. Why are people in Hawaii, West Virginia and Maine more satisfied with their careers? Is it better employers? Nicer weather? Why are unhappiness levels in Vermont and Rhode Island so high?”
Here are Sokanu’s determinations on the 10 states with the happiest workers. You can make up your own mind.
10. Oklahoma
Sokanu didn’t evaluate states’ rankings by career mix, so we can’t put our fingers on which specific career(s) in Oklahoma may make workers happiest, but it does evaluate which jobs nationally leave workers most satisfied.
It’s not a matter of money, though; Sokanu said in its report that, “of the careers with a satisfaction rating in the top quartile, only one has a U.S. median income in the six figures: CEO. And that,” it added, “isn’t exactly a career you can apply for from Craigslist.”
9. Arizona
Arizona also made the top 10, and one wonders if it might have anything to do with the much-vaunted beauty of the desert and the “artist’s colony” reputation of such areas as Sedona.
Data indicated that careers that satisfy the more right-brain interests of artistry and social interaction generally lead to higher levels of satisfaction than careers that satisfy more independent and conventional interests.
8. Alaska
How well people fit with their past jobs is determined through a series of questions asking, among other things, whether their personality meshed with the job; whether the work was interesting; and how well it suited the worker.
Alaskans apparently found work that did all of these, as well as giving “life purpose and meaning” and letting them use their “full skills and potential.”
7. Idaho
While there might not be too many film directors — the job that had the most satisfied workers — in Idaho, the state is certainly doing something right, perhaps by not offering a plethora of the wrong type of job.
Sokanu’s research indicated that careers with low satisfaction ratings appear to involve manual labor and client service. “Interestingly,” the report said, “even white-collar client service jobs had low satisfaction ratings, suggesting prestige and pay might not contribute much to our day-to-day happiness. Lawyers and accountants, for instance, both were among the lowest-rated careers.”
6. South Dakota
Another entry in the top 10 states might be unlikely to provide a broad range of job opportunities for some of the other categories with the highest satisfaction rates — athlete, DJ, choreographer and video game designer — but the state has lots of satisfied workers nonetheless, so perhaps it’s more along the lines of personal fulfillment.
The report said, “When prompted for a response to the statement, ‘I looked forward to going to work,’ people in careers that require no formal education responded more positively than [those in] careers with greater education requirements. On the other hand, users in careers requiring a high school education were among the least satisfied with their work.” While that may appear paradoxical, Sokanu reported that, “Careers that often explicitly require a high school education are manual labor or service careers, while those that require no education at all tend to be entrepreneurial (business owner) or artisanal in nature (e.g., author).”
5. Kansas
Happy workers here aren’t necessarily looking for the gateway to Oz, but they’ve definitely found some rainbows in their careers.
Even though one might expect some sample bias in the data, such as artistic people naturally choosing artistic careers, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Sokanu data indicated careers that were scored by Holland code (measures of left-brain/right-brain involvement in career paths) did not appear to have much of a relationship to the average satisfaction score of people who rank highly in those same Holland codes.
4. Nevada
There must be a lot of creative and independent people in Nevada to propel it so close to the top ranking.
The report found that a common theme among the most satisfied careers is that they allow for creativity and/or control over one’s work. “For instance, six of the top 10 most satisfied careers are highly creative careers, and three are executive positions (CEO, Chief Executive, and Entrepreneur),” it said, adding, “The only exception in the top 10 is career counsellor, which can often be a very independent job as well.”
3. Maine
Maine, as well as the second and first place states, did have an extra card to play: geography. All three reflected workers’ pleasure in their locations.
If you’re going to live and work in a New England state, it certainly helps to love the location — and the weather, including the challenges it presents.
2. West Virginia
It’s not surprising that geography might play a role in workers’ happiness, since much of its scenery is nothing short of spectacular.
There are also plenty of challenges in the state, however, and people who look for obstacles to conquer probably find plenty of rewarding opportunities.
1. Hawaii
Although Hawaii has made lists for drawback such as high cost of living, high cost of housing and other disadvantages, it also boasts incredible advantages that no doubt compensate.
Workers citing the state’s geography as one reason for their job happiness certainly have plenty to choose from: beaches, climate, exotic flora and fauna and spectacular scenery.
