How satisfied are psychology-degree holders with their jobs?

Good news for those with psychology doctoral degrees: Compared with doctoral degree holders in all other fields, people with psychology doctorates were more likely to report satisfaction with their jobs overall, according to a 2017 national survey of the college-educated U.S. population.¹ That doesn't hold true for people with master's and bachelor's degrees in psychology: They reported lower overall job satisfaction than people with degrees in other fields.² Overall, the survey found that:

• People with doctoral degrees in psychology reported greater job satisfaction than doctoral degree holders in other fields across almost all job aspects, except for benefits and job security.
• At the master's degree level, psychology degree holders were most satisfied with level of responsibility, intellectual challenge and job location relative to degree holders in other fields. They were least satisfied with salary, benefits and their contribution to society.
• Those with bachelor's degrees in psychology reported lower satisfaction for all job attributes compared with bachelor's degree holders in other fields, especially in relation to benefits and salary.

Want more information? See CWS's interactive data tools: https://www.apa.org/workforce/data-tools/index or contact cws@apa.org.

¹National Science Foundation (NSF), National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2017). National Survey of College Graduates Public Use Microdata File and Codebook. Retrieved from https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/datadownload. Respondents were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the principal job they held (job on which they spent the most hours during a typical workweek) as well as satisfaction with attributes of that job: very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, and very dissatisfied. The percentages of those listed here as satisfied with their jobs or the jobs' attributes included those who responded either "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied." The use of NSF data does not imply NSF endorsement of the research, research methods or conclusions contained in this report.

²All findings discussed in the text are statistically significant (p<0.01).