Blog Post

AEIdeas

My boss Arthur Brooks:

At first blush, our jobs seem likelier to reduce happiness than promote it. Yet the General Social Survey disagrees. More than half of Americans report being “very” or “completely” satisfied with their work. Add in “fairly” satisfied, and that number increases to more than 80 percent. Meanwhile, unemployment proves disastrous for happiness. (Retirement, in case you’re wondering, is a mixed bag: Some get happier, others do not.) This is not about money. The secret to happiness through work is earned success — the belief you are creating value with your life and value in the lives of others. Americans who feel successful in the workplace are twice as likely to say that they’re happy overall.

Along similar lines, here are Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Second Machine Age:

And this from Allison Schrager in Quartz: