The careers that make Americans happiest, based on 750k employees

You can’t buy happiness — but it may be possible to earn it.

The average person spends 90,000 hours at work. Through adulthood, your career forms the bulk of your working week, with family, leisure and other interests pushed into the margins. While your job doesn’t define you, how you think and feel is shaped to a large degree by the tasks and encounters of your daily life in the office, on-site or orbiting the planet. 

Americans are well aware of this. Pew Research found that 39% of workers say their job or career is very important to their overall identity, with another 34% saying their job is a “somewhat” important factor. And while the survey found that highly paid workers were more likely to have job satisfaction and to link their identity to their work, money is no longer the priority it once was: since the pandemic, work-life balance has overtaken salary as the primary attraction of the jobs that workers have, according to research from Aviva.

But which particular job roles are most likely to make you happy? To find out, Career.io analyzed 755,758 job reviews and identified the careers that get the most enthusiastic thumb-ups from the workforce.

What we did

We used Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to create three lists of the top 50 occupations with the most employees per 1,000 population, the highest average annual salary and those that don't require a degree, according to BLS. Next, we found the top 40 U.S. employers for each job on Glassdoor.com, using the “role” filter, and ranked all job roles by the average rating for each occupation.

Key findings

• Real Estate Agent is the popular job with the highest satisfaction levels (average rating 4.24).

• Mail Carrier is the least satisfying popular job, with an average rating of just 2.83.

• Among highly paid jobs, Data Scientist is the most satisfying (4.07).

• The least satisfying, highly-paid job is Pharmacist, with an average rating of 2.97.

The popular jobs with the highest and lowest job satisfaction in 2024

Among the 50 most common job roles, Real Estate Agents have the highest job satisfaction. The average Real Estate Agent gives their job a 4.24 rating. This is one of five top ten roles that involve significant time away from the desk; perhaps surprisingly, none of the ten lowest-rated jobs are primarily desk-based (excluding Teacher, perhaps). Google is the highest-rated employer for the third and fourth most satisfying jobs: Software Developer (overall average rating 3.86) and Designer (3.83).

Experienced realtor Tina Lapp credits the “flexibility and autonomy” of the role for an uptick in interest in the job. A Real Estate Agent must use creativity and strategy to succeed and develop rewarding human relationships along the way — hopefully with the buzz of a big sale at the end of it. “You have the power to define what “success” looks like to you and create a sustainable work schedule that helps you find joy at (and beyond) your job,” says Lapp.

The least satisfying jobs have features you might otherwise imagine to be rewarding. The Mail Carrier (2.83) gets to work outdoors, walks the neighborhood and meets people. The Pharmacist (2.97) puts specialist knowledge to effect in making people feel better and delivering wellness. The Baker (3.15) works with their hands and always smells great. Right? Unfortunately, these are rose-tinted views on some deeply taxing occupations.

In fact, both the Mail Carrier and the Baker must endure significant physical exertion and discomfort. They both rise before the birds, and neither gets much of a break until their shift is through. Pharmacists work in intense environments. They are reporting professional burnout at a growing rate. Additionally, many pharmacists feel overqualified for their role. In each of these careers, employer issues can also impact satisfaction: for example, U.S. Postal Service workers report a culture of disrespect and poor communication within the organization.

The no-degree jobs with the highest and lowest job satisfaction in 2024

Different studies have shown that while a degree may contribute to your overall feeling of well-being, it does not boost your chances of job satisfaction. We found that the average rating for the ten most satisfying jobs that don’t require a degree is just 0.06 points lower than the average rate for the ten most satisfying jobs regardless of a degree. Real Estate Agent (4.24) and Carpenter (3.95) remain the careers with the highest job satisfaction for this category as with the previous one.

 The third most satisfying no-degree job is Executive Assistant (3.84). It is a complex role that may differ greatly from how it is publicly perceived. “The job description of an ‘executive assistant’ in one company can look very different in another company,” writes Bonnie Low-Kramen. “While a college degree is not necessary to be a stellar assistant, solid experience, high emotional intelligence, advanced technology skills, and a killer network are [necessary].” 

Curiously, many no-degree careers with the highest job satisfaction levels are supporting roles: assistants, attendants and administrators. There is an element of this with the lower-rated no-degree jobs (below), but these tend to involve working in potentially unpleasant environments or thankless roles. Studies have shown that hearing “thank you” motivates employees to work harder and that job satisfaction increases with the gratitude a worker receives.

Pest Control Technician (3.02) is the lowest-rated no-degree job that doesn’t feature among our lowest-rated jobs overall. More than half of those in pest management are dissatisfied with the stress levels of the job, with summer being a particularly active time for bugs. While many pest control technicians must keep to their employer’s schedule, those on their own schedule benefit from flexibility and independence as well as the feeling of getting the job done properly rather than rushing through.

The high-paid jobs with the highest and lowest job satisfaction in 2024

Engineers and those dealing with data and figures dominate among the high-paid jobs with the highest job satisfaction. Data Scientist (4.07) and Statistician (4.04) occupy the top two positions. The Harvard Business Review named Data Scientist “the sexiest job of the 21st century” in 2012, with Google’s chief economist saying the “sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians” in the same piece.

Since then, job satisfaction for Data Scientists has continued to rise. High pay, wide choice of jobs, respect and creativity are among the selling points. “Data scientists have to make sense of complex data patterns and interweave it into a simplified narrative for a variety of stakeholders,” Glassdoor’s associate economist Richard Johnson told Fortune. “So in a way, data scientist could be considered a creative tech role… making it appealing for Gen Z.”

 But despite these “sexy” high-paid jobs being the most satisfying, high pay doesn’t guarantee happiness. The average rating among the ten lowest-rated high-paid jobs (3.33) is just 0.08 points higher than that among the no-degree jobs (3.25). As with the least satisfying jobs regardless of pay or education, Pharmacist (2.97) is the lowest rated of all.

Teachers occupy the next two spots for high pay and low satisfaction: Secondary School Teacher (3.16) and Special Education Teacher (3.22). A recent Pew Research Center survey found only 33% of teachers to be “extremely or very satisfied.” The least satisfying aspects are lack of resources, lack of training opportunities and lack of employee benefits. Additionally, 77% of K-12 (kindergarten to 12^th Grade) teachers find the work is “frequently stressful,” 68% are overwhelmed and 70% are unhappy with understaffing.

Happy to be here

Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” But Dan Cable, professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, has a new angle on that take, asking himself: “What kind of work do I find myself coming back to again and again, even when I don’t succeed right away, when it seems like it’s taking too long to make progress, or when I get discouraged?”

Being under-challenged can be as frustrating as being overworked. But while working how you like to work every hour of every day may prevent growth, finding a role where you can hit that “flow state” of applying your ingrained skillset to evolving challenges can be a good start to becoming the person you want to be in the place you want to be them. And if you get thanked for it at the end of the day — well, that’s the icing on the cake.

Methodology

First, we manually curated a list of occupations with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics focusing on three major groups:

• Top 50 occupations with the most employees per 1K population (most popular)

• Top 50 occupations with the highest average annual salary (highest paid)

• Top 50 most popular occupations that don't require a degree according to BLS (no-degree)

For each occupation, we collated the top 40 employers on Glassdoor.com in the United States before retrieving the rating breakdown by company for employees in each specific occupation using the "role" filter. 

With this data, we calculated the weighted average for each occupation across the top 40 companies and then ranked all occupations based on this weighted average.

This data analysis was completed in July 2024. The total sample includes 755,758 reviews.

Wondering what your skills are worth in today’s job market? Check out Career.io’s Salary Analyzer tool and make sure you’re getting an offer that aligns with similar jobs in your market.