Stop Whining About Your Job Already

If you believe the results of a new survey on job satisfaction, nearly 81% of all workers in the U.S. believe there is "little or no chance" that they'll lose their jobs in the next year. And should the unthinkable happen and you actually lose your job, the survey indicates that nearly a third of the workers polled think it would be pretty easy to find another job. Which might lead one to conclude: "Instead of whining about how lousy my job is, I oughtta just start looking for a new one. After all, it's not like my boss is gonna get rid of me any time soon, so what do I have to lose?"

Here's a secret that most editors won't admit, but that you probably already figured out on your own: Editors love surveys. We get a ton of them every day, and the beautiful thing is that just due to the sheer volume of surveys, you can always find one that will be interesting to at least a portion of your audience. And every so often, you'll find one that hits just about everybody's sweet spot when it comes to basic "now, this is a pretty fascinating survey" criteria.

Today's survey comes to us from Right Management, a consulting firm that you may or may not have ever heard of, but chances are you've heard of their parent company, Manpower, one of the big names in employee services (i.e., finding temporary workers). On the methodology front, 9,100 workers in 18 countries participated in the survey.

While U.S. workers are pretty darn confident that their jobs are safe, they've got nothing on the Norwegians. According to the survey, 95.5% of Norway's workers don't think there's any chance of them losing their jobs in 2007. The Danes are feeling pretty good about their job situations, too, with 93.4% of Denmark's workers saying that the idea of being sacked within the next year is not at all possible.

So much for the happy Scandinavians I'm sure what you really want to know is, which country has the least optimistic employees. Turns out that the British are the world's most pessimistic workers. Nearly a third (30.4%) of U.K. employees fear they may lose their jobs within the next 12 months, and that's a big jump from the 22.2% who shared that fear just a few months ago in a previous May 2006 survey.

In any event, before you get too giddy about what this all means, consider this observation from the survey:

"Despite their heightened job security, the percentage of U.S. employees expecting to advance in their careers has not improved significantly during the past four years to 53% in the latest survey, the same level as in May, and up from 51% in 2003."

According to Doug Matthews, executive vice president, operations, for Right Management, "While U.S. employees are more confident in their personal job security and the ability to find a comparable job if laid off, there hasn't been a similarly appreciable increase in the number of employees expecting to be promoted. Organizations are flatter today due to past downsizings, mergers and acquisitions, and there are fewer organizational levels to which employees can be promoted."

Hmmmm, that observation kind of fogs up the rose-colored glasses, doesn't it? Maybe it's okay to whine about your job, after all.