WASHINGTON, DC -- Business owners have the highest overall wellbeing of any occupational group according to Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data collected in the first eight months of 2009, followed closely by professionals and managers. Transportation and manufacturing workers have the lowest overall wellbeing.
The high wellbeing of self-employed business owners is particularly interesting in light of recent findings that business owners work longer hours than do people in any other occupational category. Their high wellbeing, despite working longer hours, supports Gallup research showing that working long hours is only highly detrimental to wellbeing for those who are less engaged in their work. In terms of income, business owners, on average, make slightly less than professionals and managers/executives, but still eclipse these groups in wellbeing. The three occupations highest in wellbeing are, in fact, those with the highest household income.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in these rankings is that those working in farming, forestry, and fishing, despite being tied for the lowest average income in these 11 groups, take the fourth spot in overall wellbeing. This is a group of jobs that often involve difficult working conditions. According to 2006 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 90% of those who fall into this broad work category are farmers (including farm workers, ranchers, etc.). Farmers and farm workers, though their work is often very hard, may enjoy some of the same autonomous qualities in their work environment as business owners -- a notion supported by the Work Environment Sub-Index data to follow.
Analyzing the scores for each occupational group across each of the six sub-indexes in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reveals benefits and drawbacks related to different jobs.
(Details on how Gallup defines each occupational category are included on page 2.)
Work Environment
Self-employed business owners truly shine on the Work Environment Sub-Index, scoring almost 16 percentage points higher than the next highest occupation.
The Work Environment Sub-Index asks people if they are satisfied with their jobs, if they get to use their strengths at work, if their supervisor treats them more like a boss or a partner, and if their supervisor creates an environment that is open and trusting. The fact that many business owners are their own supervisors surely plays a role in the very favorable Work Environment scores for this group. In this vein, it is important to note that 83% of business owners did not answer the question about whether their supervisor creates an environment that is open and trusting (presumably because they don't have a supervisor). Specifically, whereas 3,090 business owners report their job satisfaction, only 534 report whether their supervisor creates an open, trusting work environment. When focusing only on the two sub-index questions that do not involve supervisors, business owners still top this list, but by a smaller margin.
Farming, fishing, and forestry workers have the second highest Work Environment Sub-Index score. Like business owners a substantial percentage of those employed in farming, fishing, and forestry appear to not have supervisors. In this occupational group, 51% did not answer the supervisor question cited above. As is the case for business owners, however, those employed in farming, fishing, and forestry retain their second-place ranking on each of the other specific items in the Work Environment Sub-Index. The two groups that fare worst on the Work Environment Sub-Index are manufacturing workers and transportation workers, two groups that have no shortage of supervisors.
Basic Access
Managers and professionals are in a statistical tie for the top spot on the Gallup-Healthways Basic Access Sub-Index, which is based on 13 indicators gauging access to food, shelter, healthcare, and a safe and satisfying place to live.
Construction workers and service workers are in a statistical tie for the last spot in the rankings. As defined here, service worker includes a long list of specific service occupations ranging from firefighters to fast food workers. In light of the fact that this group ties with farming, fishing, and forestry for the lowest average income in these 11 groups, this low ranking on the Basic Access Sub-Index is consistent with the limited benefits and poorer neighborhoods that often accompany lower pay.
Emotional Health
Farming, fishing, and forestry workers defy the conventional wisdom on the Emotional Health Sub-Index. Whereas professional workers, managers, and business owners perform well -- as one might expect -- on positive daily experiences such as smiling and being treated with respect, farming, fishing, and forestry workers rise to the top of this list. Manufacturing and service workers are in a statistical tie for last on this list.
Healthy Behavior
Farm workers, fishers, and forestry workers also rise to the top of the Healthy Behavior Sub-Index, outpacing even business owners, professionals, and managers. The Healthy Behavior Sub-Index measures four behaviors strongly linked to physical health: eating healthy, smoking (scored in reverse), regular consumption of fruits and vegetables, and frequency of exercise. A look at respondents' answers to the individual questions in the Healthy Behavior Sub-Index reveals that farming, fishing, and forestry workers are much more likely to report physical exercise than are those in other job types. Manufacturing workers, installation workers, and transportation workers rank lowest on the Healthy Behavior Sub-Index.
Physical Health
Construction workers nominally do the best on the Physical Health Sub-Index, which includes nine items that indicate either chronic or daily illnesses. Statistically speaking, though, managers/executives, professionals, and sales workers all score just as well as construction workers. Given the very low Basic Access scores of construction workers noted previously, it is surprising to see them score as well as those at the top of the Basic Access rankings.
Perhaps the physical demands of many construction jobs require people to be physically healthy to take these jobs in the first place. This should also be true, however, of farming, fishing, and forestry workers, who score five spots below construction workers. Perhaps the most surprising finding, then, is that farming, fishing, and forestry workers only rank sixth out of 11 occupations.
Life Evaluation
The Life Evaluation Sub-Index, which is based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale, is the only sub-index on which professionals rank first. This measure asks people to evaluate their present and future lives on a scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst possible life and 10 is the best possible life.
On the Life Evaluation Sub-Index, sales workers -- a group who scored in the middle of the pack on most other indexes -- outscored all other groups except for professionals and managers. This third place ranking is less surprising in light of the fact that sales workers have the fourth highest income in these 11 groups. In these data, as elsewhere, life evaluation is strongly related to income.
Bottom Line
Business owners do well both in overall wellbeing and in many of the six specific Wellbeing Sub-Indexes. Professionals and managers do relatively well on most of the Well-Being Indexes, but they do not outperform other occupations to the extent that one might expect. Farm, fishing, and forestry workers fare better than most other groups, including many groups earning a comparable if not higher income. Transportation and manufacturing workers consistently scored at or near the bottom.
Together, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index findings reveal that different labor often does result in different lives, especially when looking at six specific domains of wellbeing. Understanding the different components of wellbeing and which occupations thrive and suffer in each regard is an important step toward identifying areas of need where employers can make changes to improve the wellbeing of their workforce, in turn helping to improve the health of the national economy.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 100,826 national adults, aged 18 and older, who are employed in one of the 11 job categories Gallup uses to assess occupation. Interviews were conducted Jan. 2-Aug. 19. 2009, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. However, because many Americans are not in the workforce, and because some Americans work in jobs that do not fit any of these job classifications, the final sample was 100,826.
Each occupational group has at least 1,900 respondents, which means that for most occupations and most indexes, the margin of sampling error is always less than ±3 percentage points. However, because farmers and small business owners often could not answer questions about their supervisors, sample sizes for these two groups on the Work Environment Index drop as low as 534. The margin of error for this smallest sample size (incorporating the design effect) is ±5 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is the first and largest survey of its kind, with 1,000 calls a day, seven days a week. It is the official statistic for Wellbeing in America, giving a daily measure of people's wellbeing at the close of every day based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing. The Well-Being Index will be a daily measure determining the correlation between the places people work and the communities in which they live, and how that and other factors impact their wellbeing. Additionally, the Well-Being Index will increase the understanding of how those factors impact the financial health of corporations and communities. For additional information, go to well-beingindex.com.
Job Classifications
Details on the job labels used in the Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing survey follow.
Professional worker--lawyer, doctor, scientist, teacher, engineer, nurse, accountant, computer programmer, architect, investment banker, stock brokerage, marketing, musician, artist
Manager, Executive, or Official--in a business, government agency, or other organization
Business Owner--such as a store, factory, plumbing contractor, etc. (self employed)
Clerical or Office worker--in business, government agency, or other type of organization--such as a typist, secretary, postal clerk, telephone operator, computer operator, data entry, bank clerk, etc.
Sales worker--clerk in a store, door-to-door salesperson, sales associate, manufacturer's representative, outside sales person
Service worker--policeman/woman, fireman, waiter or waitress, maid, nurse's aide, attendant, barber or beautician, fast-food, landscaping, janitorial, personal care worker
Construction or Mining worker--construction manager, plumber, carpenter, electrician, other construction trades, miner, or other extraction worker
Manufacturing or Production worker--operates a machine in a factory, is an assembly line worker in a factory, includes non-restaurant food preparation (baker), printer, print shop worker, garment, furniture and all other manufacturing
Transportation worker--drives a truck, taxi cab, bus or etc, works with or on aircraft (including pilots and flight attendants), trains, boats, teamster, longshoreman, delivery company worker or driver, moving company worker
Installation or Repair worker--garage mechanic, linesman, other installation, maintenance or repair worker
Farming, Fishing, or Forestry worker--farmer, farm worker, aquaculture or hatchery worker, fisherman, deck hand on fishing boat, lumberjack, forest management worker
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