Bachelor’s Degree Holders’ Job Satisfaction, by Field of Bachelor’s Degree, 2014

As one measure of job satisfaction, the 2014 Gallup-Purdue Index study of alumni shows little correspondence between job satisfaction and median earnings. On the contrary, roughly equal shares of bachelor’s degree holders in the humanities and engineering reported they were “deeply interested in the work that I do” (about 72%) and that their job provided the “opportunity to do what I do best every day” (about 70%). Even larger shares of bachelor’s degree holders from the fields with the lowest median earnings (education and the arts) reported that they felt this way about their work.1