High status people more stressed and less happy
If you have better education and higher income, you are likely to have high status jobs and have some fantastic benefits that come with it – higher incomes, greater job autonomy, and even, according to some research, longer lives. However, individuals in such high-status jobs are more stressed and less happy at work than those who have lower incomes, according to a study from California and Pennsylvania.
Sarah Damaske, assistant professor of Labor and Employment Relations and Sociology at Pennsylvania State University; Matthew Zawadzki, assistant professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Merced and Joshua Smyth, professor of Behavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University, were involved in the study.
The study cautioned that the findings should not be interpreted to suggest that low-status jobs are more beneficial to workers.
In fact, maybe some of the stresses of low-status jobs play out more directly at home than at work, even while experiences at work are less stressful.
For example, a low-status worker’s job may be more predictable while working, but there are likely to be more concerns about shift changes or unstable scheduling, or low wages and their relationship to food or housing security.
Future research should carefully address these and related questions.
Based on the study, for now, employers might consider asking employees two simple questions:
- Do you have the necessary resources to do your job?
- Do you feel able to meet the demands of your job?
Depending on how employees answer these questions, employers may decide to reconfigure the work itself or find ways to compensate for insufficient resources. Taking such steps may in turn lead to a happier and less-stressed workforce.
