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The Unhappiest Jobs In America

This article is more than 10 years old.

If you happen to be a teacher, security officer or sales engineer and you’re constantly down in the dumps – it’s not you. It’s your job.

These are three of the nation’s unhappiest professions, according to online career site CareerBliss.com. A few days ago I reported the upside of the CareerBliss list: The Happiest Jobs In America. Today I’m here to reveal the gloomy side.

In Pictures: America’s Unhappiest Jobs

CareerBliss compiled a list of the 10 unhappiest jobs based on analysis from more than 100,400 employee-generated reviews between February 2011 and January 2012. Employees were asked to rate 10 factors that affect workplace happiness, including one’s relationship with the boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and control over the work one does on a daily basis.

The employees valued each factor on a five-point scale, and also indicated how important it was to their overall happiness at work. The numbers were combined to find an average rating of overall employee happiness for each respondent, and then sorted by job title to find which occupations had the unhappiest workers. A minimum of 50 employee reviews was required to be considered for CareerBliss’ 10 Unhappiest Jobs in America, and executive level jobs, like chief executive, were excluded from the study.

"It is imperative to understand what drives happiness and unhappiness in the workplace and what factors impact various job types,” says CareerBliss’ chief executive, Heidi Golledge.

Why?

“We have found a direct correlation in career happiness to overall happiness in life,” says Matt Miller, chief technology officer at CareerBliss. “Stress at work, for example, can often carry over to stress at home. “

Heading the list of the unhappiest jobs is security officer, with an index score of 3.51 out of 5. That’s compared to a score of 4.24 for software quality assurance engineer, which is America’s happiest job.

“People might think that the work environment security guards often face, such as working late hours alone at night, would be what contributes to unhappiness,” Miller says. “However, our data shows that growth opportunities and lack of rewards in this field is what affected the overall sentiment around this type of job. Work environment scored relatively high.”

The second and third unhappiest jobs are registered nurse and teacher. They earned scores of 3.55 and 3.59, respectively. Nurses cited compensation, growth opportunities, and workplace culture as the three things they are most dissatisfied with. Teachers are least happy with compensation, growth opportunities and the company they work for.

“CareerBliss has found through our research that teachers appear to be quite happy with their work and their coworkers.  However, the rewards for their work, lack of support, and lack of opportunities to be promoted counteract many of the good parts of the job,” Golledge says. “Nurses, on the other hand, have more issues with the culture of their workplaces, the people they work with, and the person they work for.  The factors driving the unhappiness tell different stories for these two jobs.”

If you’re hoping to smile more at work, you should also stay away from managerial jobs like product manager and marketing manager. Instead, consider pursuing a career as a chef, an accountant, or a human resources manager--all of which are some of America’s happiest lines of work, according to CareerBliss.

In Pictures: America’s Unhappiest Jobs