
U.S. Employees Are the Happiest - corporate_shi11
https://www.statista.com/chart/20223/employees-happy-us-world/
======
ddxxdd
There is no link to the original study. There are two links within the text,
but neither of them link to the study. In fact, one of those two links is
misleadingly presented as the link to the study, but is not actually the link
to the study.

Challenge question for stats and math nerds: if 93% of a sample of 1000
Americans claim they enjoy their job, and if 91% of a sample of ~650
Netherlanders claim that they love their job, then what are the odds that this
is a statistical fluke and that a greater portion of Netherlanders enjoy their
jobs than Americans?

~~~
savagedata
You're looking to test the difference in proportions. I entered 0.93 / 1000 /
0.91 / 650 into this online calculator [1] and got a p-value of 0.14 which
means that the difference is not statistically significant. Technically you
would want to do some correction for multiple comparisons since your actual
question is "are Americans more happy than workers in every other country?"
not "are Americans more happy than Netherlanders specifically?" but it's a
moot point since the difference already isn't significant.

A more important question is probably how the sampling was conducted. How did
they guarantee a representative sample in each country? How did they account
for the gig economy, small businesses, part-time employees, and employees paid
under the table? So many ways a survey like this could be wrong.

[1]
[https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/default2.aspx](https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/default2.aspx)

------
Hydraulix989
What about our lack of vacation days and holidays?

~~~
adventured
Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days
each year. Work guilt may play a role:

"Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according
to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55
percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time."

"More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent — reported feeling guilty about
taking vacation time either sometimes, often or always, according to a survey
of more than 2,000 full-time workers in the United States by TurnKey Vacation
Rentals."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what-
does-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what-does-america-
have-against-vacation/)

~~~
speedplane
> Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days
> each year. Work guilt may play a role

That is a plausible but pessimistic view of the situation. The more optimistic
reading is that american workers derive personal pleasure and fulfillment from
the work itself. If you are happier working in a fulfilling job than sitting
idly on a beach, then it would make sense you wouldn't use all of your
vacation days.

Work guilt probably does play a role, as does corporate policies that subtly
punish vacation, but I would also bet that some percentage of workers actually
enjoy what they do.

~~~
playeren
> than sitting idly on a beach

Or spending time with family, learning a new skill, going on an adventure.

"Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and
innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.

~~~
speedplane
> "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and
> innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.

I don't disagree, we're not talking about absolutes here. But it's reasonable
to consider that, all other things being equal, someone who loves their job
may be less inclined to take as many vacation days compared to someone who
hates their job.

Advocating for longer vacations, leisure time, and simply being disconnected
so folks can develop their interests outside of work are important. However,
most people spend most of their non-sleeping life at work. Accordingly, making
work itself more fulfilling can often have a far greater impact than simply
requiring less of it.

~~~
playeren
As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO. We're not paying for
it to be nice, we expect ROI. Happy, healthy people are generally productive,
highly cooperative and inventive.

~~~
speedplane
> As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO.

Sure, but as a manager, you should probably know that giving people engaging
work, with meaningful impact, and significant personal growth opportunities is
often a greater motivator than providing additional days off.

~~~
playeren
You misunderstand. Off-time provides benefits that are almost impossible to
achieve in even the best work environment.

* PTO is not about motivation - it's about quality of work output.

