The Social Psyche of the American Worker: U.S. Job Joy Report

At Brandwatch, it’s not enough to see data on trending social stories or brand campaigns.

It’s not even enough to dive deep into breaking news and see how those topics are playing out on social.

Everyone here at Brandwatch yearns to know more and challenge social data and the Brandwatch Analytics platform to help us pull out intriguing new types of data.

Enter Monster. A global leader in connecting people to jobs, Monster is also a Brandwatch Analytics and Brandwatch Vizia user utilizing social data visualizations to help make those connections even faster and more efficient.

Together we wanted to uncover the truth about how Americans really feel about their jobs – are certain states happier than others? Do specific workers in an industry hate their jobs? Are people Tweeting on a specific day, or during a specific month, far beyond the rest of the week or year?

Conducting a thorough social media study looking at more than 1.1 million Tweets over the course of an entire year (March 2014-March 2015), Monster and Brandwatch are excited to unleash the findings we’ve unearthed from all this insightful social data.

---

For better or for worse

Some people might not immediately see the connection, but it’s crystal clear to us just how important it is to be matched up with the right job.

Being a part of an environment, work culture, and field of work that is interesting to you and nurturing for your personal needs is vital to happiness. Securing job joy is just as important as finding joy in love in your personal relationships – be they romantic, familial, or otherwise.

Location definitely matters when it comes to job satisfaction in the U.S. according to our study.

Eight out of the top 10 states where people Tweet about loving their job at a higher ratio to hating their job are in the Western half of the country:

1. Hawaii
2. Utah
3. Oregon
4. California
5. Washington
6. Minnesota
7. Nevada
8. Maine
9. Arkansas
10. Idaho

The top 10 states in which people on Twitter have a higher ratio of discussing hating their job vs loving their job are all exclusively in the Eastern half of the US, with approximately half of those job hating states in the Northeast region:

1. Florida
2. West Virginia
3. Delaware
4. Virginia
5. Ohio
6. New Jersey
7. Pennsylvania
8. Rhode Island
9. Louisiana
10. Maryland

Many different factors could be behind this lack of job joy, be they severe winter weather patterns, lack of personal or real estate space, and various other factors that contribute to overall happiness in work and in life.

---

Job joy, job joy, wherefore art thou job joy?

The type of industry a U.S. employee works in, and the top skills and job titles in their specific region, are factors when it comes to job happiness.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the job industries in the data we analyzed, and a look at the volume of conversations and Twitter posts about loving their jobs and hating their jobs.

Some of the drops or increases are quite notable, with Retail and Finance sector employees all having double the amount of posts about hating their jobs than loving.

Healthcare and Tech, however, are two fields that have half as many “hate” Tweets as job love Tweets.

For more #USJobJoy details on the top jobs and job skills in each state, gender demographics of loving vs. hating U.S. jobs, and much more download the full report.

Some of the most intriguing bits of data included are:

• Which U.S. state residents Tweet the most about loving their jobs
• The profession that Tweets most frequently about hating their job
• The day of the week people are more likely to tweet about loving their job vs. hating their job

Do you hate your job? Do you love your job? Do you just live in Hawaii and have no worries about anything ever?

Leave your thoughts on this data in comments or get in touch if you have any questions. Join the #USJobJoy conversation @Brandwatch and @Monster.

Now you know™