It’s too late for Labor Day, but the somewhat surprising results of this week’s Forbes article of the top 10 happiest jobs (especially the eye-opening #1 happiest career choice) have been rippling through social media and such. You can read the full list at the link above. Here are a few thoughts of my own, in reverse order.
10. Operating engineers: Playing with giant toys like bulldozers, front-end loaders, backhoes, scrapers, motor graders, shovels, derricks, large pumps, and air compressors can be fun. With more jobs for operating engineers than qualified applicants, operating engineers report being happy.
As it should be. Most of the jobs in the top 10 are professional careers, but it’s good to see tradesmen make the list. Working with power equipment combines the virtues of plain manual labor—an occupation that Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, came to appreciate while working in a limestone quarry during World War II—with the satisfaction of skilled labor. It’s not just playing with toys. It’s work work: not clean perhaps, but good and honest, working directly with dirt and rocks and asphalt and so forth, moving and manipulating the elements of the world to do what needs doing, as men have done ever since Adam.
7. Artists: Sculptors and painters report high job satisfaction, despite the great difficulty in making a living from it.
4. Authors: For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existent, but the autonomy of writing down the contents of your own mind apparently leads to happiness.
Artistic work is the polar opposite of manual labor, even when one works directly with material like clay or paint not necessarily that different from the raw matter of the laborer’s work. The artist’s work is both creative and revelatory, reflecting God’s own work of creation and revelation.
“Of itself,” declares the 1971 pastoral instruction Communio et Progressio, “beauty ennobles the mind that contemplates it.” But art goes beyond this. Craftsmen may create beauty; a nice hardwood floor can be beautiful. “The work of an artist,” Communio et Progressio says, “can also penetrate and illumine the deepest recesses of the human spirit. It can make spiritual reality immediate by expressing it in a way that the senses can comprehend. And as a result of this expression man comes to know himself better.”
Quoting Paul VI, the instruction adds: “It is a fact that when you writers and artists are able to reveal in the human condition, however lowly or sad it may be, a spark of goodness, at that very instant a glow of beauty pervades your whole work.”
8. Psychologists: Psychologists may or may not be able to solve other people’s problems, but it seems that they have managed to solve their own.
6. Teachers: Teachers in general report being happy with their jobs, despite the current issues with education funding and classroom conditions. The profession continues to attract young idealists, although fifty percent of new teachers are gone within five years.
5. Special education teachers: If you don’t care about money, a job as special education teacher might be a happy profession. The annual salary averages just under $50,000.
3. Physical therapists: Social interaction and helping people apparently make this job one of the happiest.
All of these careers, not just the last, involve social interaction and helping people. And not just helping people, but helping people improve, helping them learn or cope or adapt. The #2 occupation below also involves helping people, but the people themselves are, at best, the same after you’re done helping them as they were last week (and grateful for it). If you’re a teacher, a therapist or a psychologist, hopefully some people are better for your interaction with them.
2. Firefighters: Eighty percent of firefighters are “very satisfied” with their jobs, which involve helping people.
We often think of firefighters and police officers in the same breath, but it’s easy to see why, of these two first-responder occaptions, firefighters might be happier. Police officers deal all the time with the worst side of humanity. More than that, they deal with all sorts of ambiguous situations where it’s unclear whether or not someone is guilty, whether someone should be stopped and questioned, whether a domestic disturbance is a serious situation or something to walk away from, etc.
If you’re a firefighter, there might be a lot of false alarms, cats up in trees, and non-fire situations to respond to—but when there is a emergency, and especially when there’s a fire, it’s black-and-white: fire bad, people good. Plus, people are always happy to see you.
Finally, the #1 happiest job in the world:
1. Clergy: The least worldly are reported to be the happiest of all.
How about that.
What do people need most of all in life? Not pleasure or power. Not career advancement or personal development. What people need most of all is meaning. And while all good and useful work has meaning, it’s not hard to understand why those whose lives are dedicated to serving God find the deepest meaning, and therefore the most satisfaction, of all.
P.S. Sorry, financial services sales agents: I have nothing special to say about you.
How about you? What do you do, and how happy are you about it?
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I am a mom. Best job in the world.
Denise: Ah, that transcends the whole question.
I have to agree with Denise. I am a mom, too—Absolutely the best job. Nice workplace, really cute co-workers. Oh, and I make up my own hours, too (unless the baby gets up at night).
Yeah, I’m with Denise. I left teaching to be a mom. I loved teaching, but motherhood is better.
Funny to note how, with a few exceptions, none of these are particularly lucrative professions.
I am a chiropractor.
Pray for me.
I’m an ER nurse. I like my job. I work just part-time. I’m a SAHM who homeschools otherwise. I think though, that if I worked full-time, I wouldn’t be happy. I’d want a different job. The politics and budget cuts make for unhappy nurses.
I wonder if it has something to do with finding your vocation. I bet people who are doing what they know they were born to do are the most satisfied. I know I am, but like many above, I’m a mom.
“If you don’t care about money, a job as special education teacher might be a happy profession. The annual salary averages just under $50,000.” Where do these people live that “just under $50,000” sounds like a job for people who don’t care about money? That sounds like a LOT of money to me.
I am a stay at home Grandmother. I used to be an associate buyer at two different major retail chains. I loved doing it! I got to travel and excercise my creativity in the field of fine jewelry. However, I must say that while the money was great, I find greater satisfaction watching my grandaughter than I ever did zipping around the world or creating a beautiful piece of jewelry!
I am a stay at home Grandmother. I used to be an associate buyer at two different major retail chains. I loved doing it! I got to travel and exercise my creativity in the field of fine jewelry. However, I must say that while the money was great, I find greater satisfaction watching my granddaughter than I ever did zipping around the world or creating a beautiful piece of jewelry! I also have my own business called Yeshua Rosaries. I custom design and repair Rosaries. (don’t try and look it up as I don’t have a website yet. That costs money) I love doing that too. I don’t make money out of it but I really don’t care. I do it for love of Jesus and Mary.
My husband is always tongue in cheek telling me to “get a job” (never mentions the haircut). I keep telling him that nobody will pay me to do the things I love to do. I love giving out communion at the nursing home, working with small children (Taught preschool for 11 years. Made $6.00 an hour!), working with RCIA, Scripture classes, learning (that COSTS money, not makes it), gardening, camping…So instead, I’ve raised 6 kids and am helping to raise 4 grandkids. I may not be making any money, but I’m loving every minute of it.
Janette: They probably live on the East Coast, where you can barely afford your own apartment on $50,000. Of course, here in New York, special-ed teachers can make upwards of $150,000, so yeah, I doubt they’re complaining much!
I am a software sales guy. I have to travel a lot and leave my wife and babies at home at least a couple times a month. I do it for the money, and I like to interact with the nice people I meet. My product is great so I believe in that, but I otherwise have zero interest in it. I’d rather write or sculpt. Seriously. What I really should do is sculpt some literature!
Unfortunately, the money has dried up. I have all these pending sales that may or may not happen. The work is all done. Now we are just waiting. If they happen, we will be in fantastic shape, if they don’t we will be down at the soup kitchen. Very tough indeed. Especially with a new baby on the way and the wife with anxiety issues. Just hoping to survive here.
Franklin, I’ll pray for the success of your sales! I know how that goes. After being an associate buyer, I went into sales. Did not like it at all. Shortly after that I “retired”. (ie the company I worked for laid me and 50 others off and I could not find another job) Thank God for my husband. He stepped up to the plate and went after the higher paying job and got it! If that had not happened we would have been sunk. Still lost the house and the new car and ended up living in a very dangerous neighborhood for several years. But you know what? We learned we could not make it without God. We relied heavily on him and we received so many graces. It’s hard not to worry I know! But if you seek the Peace of Jesus, He will give it to you! This is the assurance that no matter what happens, good or bad, He will be there with you all the way. Trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus!
I am a Director of Religious Education. I formerly taught high school religion, a job I was clearly not called to keep long-term. My job at the parish is great! I gave up a summer vacation to take this now job but I’m so glad I did. I make less than 40k but I’m totally satisfied with this job.
I am a medical student, I can see full well why being a physician didn’t make the cut. No matter how much I like my future profession, I will likely never get over the bitterness of having to go through med school to get there lol.
I’m one of those (apparently “evil”) financial services industry guys. I’ve never had a year where I broke even; no, I’m not in big financial trouble because (a) I have an IRA and (b) I’m a retired Navy officer. But the “gobs of money” characterization of financial people is not universal. Yet, I get great satisfaction from helping people protect their families, protect their (admitedly, temporal) futures, and have more to give to their church. In our “values discussion,” probably 80% of our clients indicate that “giving back to God” is one of their absolute highest values—THAT’S what I help them do.
Being a Grandma is even better :)
@ Rich: I certainly didn’t mean to imply that financial services guys are evil! I just had nothing insightful to say. Really. Cheers!
I belong to several of those categories; special education teacher, and author. I am also a mother, so the low pay/high satisfaction ratio is something I am very familiar with. I don’t really think better pay would mar my happiness, however!
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