Low Wage Earners Happy To Have Jobs

The Age

Monday November 10, 2008

By BEN SCHNEIDERS, WORKPLACE REPORTER

PEOPLE paid the minimum wage are far happier than the unemployed and just as happy as many people who are paid more, research has shown.

The results are surprising; it was expected that the struggle of living on $14.31 an hour - the minimum wage - would have a significant impact on happiness.

Instead those workers, when asked to measure their "life satisfaction", gave almost identical responses to those on middle incomes. Their level of satisfaction was reported to be only marginally below the highly paid, a group defined as the top 25% of wage earners.

The results, based on an analysis of more than 7000 people surveyed in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia series, show that unemployment is extremely bad for well-being. Not only are the unemployed less happy, their opinion of their health is much lower than those with jobs.

Research fellow Mike Dockery, from Perth's Curtin Business School, said the evidence suggested having a job, not how much you were paid, was more important to happiness.

"There's no doubt unemployment has negative effects on health, particularly on mental health," he said.

The findings suggested the higher your wage, the better your assessment of your health, but it was unclear if poor health was caused by unemployment or poor health was a reason for not having a job, he said.