More Than Money: How Educational Attainment and Job Conditions Predict Job Satisfaction and Career Paths

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Education and Jobs: New Perspectives on Educational Attainment

Abstract

Though everyone recognizes that some jobs are better than others, determining what makes a job "good" is difficult. While economists often focus on earnings, sociologists and psychologists highlight many other desirable job aspects. Merging data from ELS:2002 with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ O*NET database, we examine how educational credentials relate to objective job attributes and whether job attributes predict satisfaction, learning on the job, and career relevance. We find that after controlling for earnings, many objective job attributes significantly predict these non-monetary job rewards among both bachelor's and sub-baccalaureate credential holders. Our strongest finding is that working in a job for which one is overeducated is associated with lower levels of both objective job attributes and subjective job rewards.

Authors

• Alexis Gable, Northwestern University

• Lynn Meissner, Northwestern University

• James E. Rosenbaum, Northwestern University