Singapore Workers Not Happier Despite Robust Economic Growth In 2010

Nov. 29, 2010 - PRLog -- Launched in 2009, the JobsCentral Work Happiness Indicator measures how happy working adults are, by finding out how satisfied they are with various work attributes they consider important. Last year, the overall average score of the respondents was 56.4 out of 100. This year, 3,402 working adults participated in the survey, and the overall average score is 55.5.

A score of 50 indicates that an employee feels neutral about his work happiness, and a full score of 100 will mean that he is very happy. The methodology of how the Happiness Indicator scores are calculated is on pages 06 - 08 of the full report of the survey attached with this release.

“Singapore’s economy is on track to grow by 13 to 15 per cent this year, which is a very strong turnaround from last year’s downturn. Yet our Work Happiness Indicator shows that employees are not happier this year as compared to recession-struck 2009. We believe this is because many employers are still cautious about strong hiring and wage increase. They are waiting to see if the growth is sustainable. Hence, employees have not really seen their bonuses or wages increase much. The situation could change year end and in 1H 2011 as low unemployment, inflation and higher profits translate to strong wage pressure,” said Lim Der Shing, Chief Executive Officer of JobsCentral.

All 3,402 respondents are above the age of 21, with about 60% falling into the age group of 21 – 30. Three in four respondents hold permanent jobs, while about 45% have a Bachelor’s degree.

When asked to rank various work attributes by importance, most respondents chose “advancement opportunities”, followed by “acceptable work demands” in second place and “salary” in third place. The work attribute considered least important to respondents was “positive impact to society”, which suggests that most employees are not concerned with whether or not their jobs allow them to contribute to society at large.

Upon further analysis, it was found that employees who earn more and are better educated consider the attribute of “positive impact to society” to be less important than their peers with lower salaries and qualifications.

“This finding is interesting as it means that the more well-endowed and educated employees among our work force feel that their work happiness is not tied to impacting society positively via their employer. We can interpret this in two ways. First, that the more elite members of our workforce have other volunteer or community work that fulfill their need to give back. Or second, that these members are more materialistic and self-centred compared to the general workforce. If the latter is true, then it would be a trend that merits more study and concern,” said Der Shing.

When the Work Happiness Indicator scores are sorted by gross monthly salary, those earning $7,000 - $7,999 are the happiest with a score of 59.2, followed by those earning $8,000 - $8,999 (58.0). In comparison, those earning $10,000 and above only have a score of 56.4, suggesting that a higher salary may not lead to more work happiness.

In terms of job function, employees in Legal functions are the happiest with a score of 58.8, followed by those in Education/Training (58.5) and Research and Development (57.9). Those in Public Relations were the least happy with a score of 50.4.

Other key findings:

Male employees are slightly happier than female employees. Men have an average score of 55.8, marginally higher than that of 55.0 for women.

Employees in service industries are generally happier than those in manufacturing. When scores are sorted by industry of work, service industries generally had higher scores than manufacturing industries. The industries with the happiest employees are Services: Community, social and personal services (59.8) and Services: Arts, entertainment, recreation and other services (59.8).

Interns are the happiest lot. When scores are sorted by the type of employment, interns emerge as the happiest with a high score of 63.5. Contract/Temporary employees are understandably the least happy with a score of 54.3, while part-time and permanent employees have respective scores of 59.8 and 55.5 respectively.

To get a copy of the full report, please contact Colin at colinlim@jobscentral.com.sg or Si Wei at siwei@jobscentral.com.sg for more details.

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