(TNND) — A lot of attention is paid to the number of jobs in the economy, but a new report tackles the key questions around what makes for quality jobs.
And just 40% of American workers have a quality job, the researchers found.
“It was born out of this recognition that the way that we measure jobs in this country just has not kept up with the way work actually operates and doesn’t capture a full enough picture of people’s experiences,” said Molly Blankenship, the lead author of the report and a director at Jobs for the Future.
The American Job Quality Study was published Thursday by Gallup in partnership with Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
Dozens of people worked on this report for over a year, with over 18,000 American workers surveyed about their experiences with pay, culture, schedules and more.
They surveyed workers across the spectrum of industries and job types, from white collar to blue collar, from high earners to minimum wage.
“It’s meant to be and was designed to be completely representative of the U.S. labor force,” Blankenship said. “So, all those different pockets and work types, et cetera.”
She said the “Great Resignation” during the pandemic and the quiet quitting phenomenon point to their belief that job quality matters alongside job quantity.
And a quality job has ripple effects for the individual worker, their family, their community and their company.
“We’ve been really intentional in this survey of measuring the impact of different elements of job quality on worker satisfaction because we know that satisfaction directly impacts things like workers’ productivity, their engagement level, which has major bottom-line implications for businesses,” Blankenship said.
Defining a quality job is no easy task.
And a good job for one person isn’t necessarily a good job for another.
A working parent might put more stock in schedule flexibility.
A young worker might care more about advancement opportunities.
But the researchers looked at prior research on worker satisfaction and productivity and came up with five key components of work that come together to support a quality experience.
“It is about fair pay and benefits and job security,” Blankenship said. “But it’s also about having opportunities to grow or hone your skills, having a voice in decisions that affect you, feeling safe at work and like you belong, and then making sure that your schedule and your workloads are sustainable.”
Quality jobs are not evenly distributed across the workforce, they found.
And Blankenship said they found that some issues are potentially systemic across the workforce.
“For instance, around scheduling, which I was interested and surprised to see, that regardless of your education or whatever, there are many workers, millions of workers, in the U.S. who are working longer than planned, don’t know their schedule, and are struggling with work-life balance,” she said.
Most employees, 71%, reported having the freedom to decide how they perform their tasks. But 62% said they lacked schedules that provided predictability or stability.
About a third of workers are struggling to get by financially.
Most on-the-job training in America is going to the employees who already have the most formal education, which Blankenship said reinforces that there are unmet needs for skills-based training and non-degree hiring.
Across the board, workers didn’t have as much influence or say in workplace decisions as they thought they should.
More than half of workers reported limited input on decisions involving technology, and just under half said they lacked the voice they should have in shaping their working conditions.
Blankenship said it is “low-hanging fruit” for employers to embrace two-way dialogue without employees fearing retaliation.
That alone can do a lot to boost worker satisfaction.
She said the findings on job quality could help community colleges or universities support students as they navigate a changing economy.
It could demystify worker satisfaction for companies.
And it could empower individuals as they go through their careers.
“If we start to understand what the different aspects of a quality job are, then we can start to look for them and ask for them, or negotiate around them as workers ourselves, and we can better support our kids as they go off into the future,” Blankenship said.