What makes a job better? Survey evidence from job changers

Overall, changes in job characteristics are modestly positively correlated. Table 4 shows a correlation matrix of improvements in each of the characteristics among job changers. Again, a greater interest in the work was most correlated with the job being better overall, followed by pay and benefits, advancement opportunities, and work–life balance. Improvements in pay and benefits are positively correlated with improvements in all other characteristics. The pay and benefit changes associated with a job change are most strongly correlated with opportunities for advancement and are less correlated with interest in the work, physical demands, and work–life balance. Analyzed together, the positive correlations are consistent with differences in overall quality across jobs, as opposed to an equilibrium where jobs offer compensating differentials for lower quality characteristics.

When we examine the correlations more broadly to see which characteristics tend to change together, we find that interest in the work is correlated with most other characteristics. Interest has a correlation of 0.36 with opportunities for advancement, 0.30 with physical demands, 0.27 with work–life balance, and 0.19 with pay and benefits. (See table 4.) This suggests that being more interested in a job is associated with a work environment that provides other amenities, like opportunities for advancement and an ability to fulfill obligations outside of work.

Grouping the data by education shows weaker correlations between job characteristics for more educated workers. (See table 5.) For workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher, unlike workers overall, work–life balance and physical demands have very low correlations with pay and benefits. In contrast, the correlation levels between job characteristic changes are larger for those with a high school education or less, although the general patterns are similar. Increases in self-assessed job quality are most correlated with interest in the job, followed by pay, work–life balance, and opportunities for advancement. Changes in pay and benefits are most correlated with opportunities for advancement but are also relatively correlated with interest in the work. However, one difference is that, for those with a high school degree or less, changes in work–life balance are more correlated with changes in pay, interest in the work, opportunities for advancement, and overall job quality than for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The correlations suggest that the variation in job characteristics are more likely to reflect overall job quality for workers with a high school degree or less compared to workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. If one characteristic, like pay and benefits, improves, then it is more likely that other characteristics will improve as well. One implication is that differences in pay and benefits understate differences in overall job quality for less educated workers. Finally, it is also important to note that previous research suggests that workers without a bachelor’s degree generally have lower levels of pay, less workplace flexibility, and higher physical demands in their jobs.

Which job characteristics do workers value when changing jobs?

In this section, we use a linear probability model to assess the importance of changes in each job characteristic in predicting changes in overall self-reported job quality. The linear probability model is a regression of an indicator for whether the new job is better than the old job (1(qj > qj′)) on indicators for whether each characteristic is better or worse (with the characteristic being the same as the omitted category). The result is a series of coefficients whose interpretation is the average increase in the probability that the job is better if the given characteristic k is better (βkB) or worse (βkW), relative to the characteristics being the same, conditional on all others:

Consistent with the previous error rate analysis, the most influential job characteristic is interest in the work. Table 6 shows results for the sample of 2,592 job changers. In terms of statistical and economic significance, the most important characteristic is interest in the work. Being more interested in the work makes a job changer 27 percentage points more likely to say the job is better, the highest increment for any characteristic. Additionally, being less interested in the work makes someone 21 percentage points less likely to say the job is better.

Improvements in pay and benefits as well as work–life balance are also very predictive of a worker saying that a job is better, holding other characteristics constant. Better pay and benefits makes an individual 19 percentage points more likely to say the job is better, and better work–life balance makes an individual 18 percentage points more likely to say the job is better. (See table 6.) Better work opportunities are associated with a 9-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of the job being better, but changes in physical demands have a small and statistically undetectable effect.

Next, we show evidence that parents particularly value changes in work–life balance by separately estimating the model on samples based on the presence of children in the household. Parents of a child under 13 have a 23-percentage-point greater probability of saying a job is better, conditional on work–life balance being better. (See table 6.) The point estimate is smaller for nonparents, with only a 17-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of saying the job is better based on work–life balance being better, although the standard errors of these estimates limit the strength of these conclusions.

The estimates also suggest that mothers value changes in work–life balance more than fathers. In table 6, mothers of children under 13 have a higher coefficient of 0.29 compared with 0.19 for fathers.

Women also have a larger estimated coefficient on work–life balance than men. Previous research has documented gender differences in value placed on certain job characteristics, finding that women with young children were willing to give up more in salary to avoid irregular schedules and to work from home than women without young children or men with children. Others have found that women have a higher willingness to give up more in salary in exchange for paid time off and lower physical demands.

Table 7 shows the same specification broken out by age and education. Notably, pay and benefits have larger coefficients for younger workers compared with older workers, consistent with previous research. Workers 45 and older are only 14 percentage points more likely to say a job is better if pay and benefits are better, compared with 23 percentage points among workers under 30. Having greater interest in the work is also more predictive of changes in overall self-reported job quality for older workers, though the magnitude of the coefficient on having a less interesting job suggests a smaller effect in that direction. We also find that changes in work–life balance are more predictive of self-reported job quality for job changers under 45, which could reflect their higher likelihood of having young children at home. (See table 6.) Self-assessed opportunities for advancement lead to a statistically significant increase in self-assessed overall job quality for workers under 45, while the coefficient is statistically insignificant for workers 45 and older. Also, we do not detect differences in the role of physical demands of the job by age.

We find relatively few differences in what predicts self-reported job quality between workers with a high school degree or less compared with those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, although the estimates are imprecise. Previous research has found that workers of all education levels value similar job characteristics, but that less educated workers have much lower levels of these amenities in their jobs.