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Britain Only 17th in New Job-Satisfaction League Table

Originally Published - 9 May 2000

New research from the University of Warwick reveals that Britain trails at number 17 in the job-satisfaction international league table.

Using newly released data, Professor Andrew Oswald an Economist at the University of Warwick, and an American colleague Professor David Blanchflower from Dartmouth College in the US surveyed 19,000 workers in face-to-face interviews. Across a large number of nations, Denmark was the top-ranked country, with 62% of workers completely or very satisfied with their jobs. In Great Britain, by contrast, the equivalent figure was only 36% of workers.

Nations like Switzerland (53%), Spain (50%) and the US (49%) easily outperformed Britain.

Professor Oswald said: "For a prosperous nation, we do a lot less well on the latest job-satisfaction ranking than we should. These findings are consistent with other evidence that the 1990s was not an especially good decade in British workplaces. We don't yet understand why. Job insecurity and longer commutes may be part of the explanation."

The Eastern European nations performed worst on the survey. Japan too was low down, with only 30% of employees completely or very satisfied with their jobs. France (at 32%) was also slightly below Britain. Hungary was the bottom country in the whole ranking.

Note for editors: The full league-table numbers are Denmark 62%, Philippines 61, Cyprus 60, Switzerland 53, Israel (Arabs) 52, Spain 50, Netherlands 49, US 49, Israel (Jews) 47, New Zealand 41, Sweden 40, Canada 39, Portugal 39, Russia 39, Western Germany 39, Norway 37, Britain 36, Italy 35, Bangladesh 33, France 32, Eastern Germany 31, Japan 30, Czech Republic 28, Poland 27, Slovenia 27, Bulgaria 26, Hungary 23.

For further information please contact:

Professor Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics
University of Warwick Tel: 024 76 523510 (Office),
01367 860005 (Home)
email Andrew.Oswald@warwick.ac.uk (office)
a.j.oswald@oswald.co.uk (home)
Web http://www.oswald.co.uk