When we study the world of work, we tend to focus on carefully selected labour market indicators objectively depicting the situation and characteristics of workers. This is natural, given that the material and objective realization of decent work is at the heart of our wellbeing. However, our feelings and perception have an impact on our life experiences, and thus, our wellbeing, as well.
Subjective wellbeing refers to how we perceive our quality of life (including our worklife), which may or may not be in line with our actual quality of life. Material wellbeing is essential, but subjective wellbeing cannot be overlooked, especially when the two are exhibiting opposing trends. Indeed, the subjective sense of wellbeing (in addition to or more so than actual wellbeing) may guide our decisions, including decisions about participation in the labour market and life in society.
There seems to be a trend unfolding whereby we are moving away from a very material or economic view of life quality towards a wider perspective, more oriented towards happiness, including when it comes to assessing our worklife. This trend was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which made us rethink our priorities and what constitutes our wellbeing, but a growing body of happiness research points to a broader, preceding trend. In fact, it was back in 2011 that the UN’s General Assembly adopted its resolution Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development. This resolution, sponsored by Bhutan, invited national governments to give more importance to happiness and wellbeing in the achievement and measure of socioeconomic development. Every 20th of March we observe the International Day of Happiness to further recognize the relevance of happiness and wellbeing as universal goals and public policy objectives.
Why measuring happiness matters
Measuring items such as job satisfaction, the workplace experience, having a sense of purpose, positive or negative feelings, expectations, life satisfaction, and happiness is no easy task given the inherent subjectivity attached to them. However, attempting to do so as consistently and reliably as possible is still crucial, given their utmost importance for our wellbeing. Aside from the obvious role that job and life satisfaction play in our lives and the genuine interest in people’s perception of their own quality of life, there may also be a practical reason for subjective wellebing measures.
As Kaiser and Oswald demonstrate in their 2022 paper, a feelings score (such as rating happiness on a numerical scale) has more predictive power than a combined set of socioeconomic measures in some life domains. What is more, a feelings score appears to have a clear link with our actions (that is, decisions such as changing jobs, moving, leaving a partner, etc. are inversely correlated with our levels of perceived happiness). Remarkably, we seem able to rate our feelings reliably and systematically, although there is no objective scientific basis for it. This points to the importance of considering and understanding our feelings and subjective appraisal of our own lives and worklives, as they drive in great measure key decisions affecting the community and the society, including world-of-work decisions.
It is also essential to understand the main drivers of changes in subjective wellbeing. Moro-Egido, Navarro and Sánchez analyse long-term and short-term subjective wellbeing changes in Germany, revealing an interesting pattern. Indeed, social capital and values and cultural dimensions are the strongest determinants of long-term changes in subjective wellbeing, whereas in the short term, subjective wellbeing improvements and declines are both more strongly connected to economic resources. In the long term, income increases are a weaker driver of subjective wellbeing improvements because we tend to assess our economic resources in relative terms, comparing them to those of better-off households (amongst other things).
The disconnect between perception and reality
The latest edition of the World Happiness Report (2025) will be released on March 20th to commemorate the International Day of Happiness. The 2024 edition had shown that in 78 out of 134 countries with data (58 per cent), the levels of happiness have decreased from 2006-2010 to 2021-2023. This is a sobering and surprising finding considering the notorious progress made in recent decades in poverty reduction, life expectancy, access to education, access to safe drinking water and basic infrastructure, among other key areas of material life. Granted, the progress has in general terms slowed down in recent years (and was even reversed in some areas in relation with the Covid-19 pandemic) and its pace is still insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, but the fact that most countries experienced a decrease in happiness while so many socioeconomic measures revealed material progress points to the importance of non-material aspects in our life satisfaction.
A similar pattern is revealed in OECD’s How’s Life? study, which shows that government interventions have greatly mitigated the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, making incomes and employment outcomes resilient. However, warning signs appeared in critical non-economic aspects of wellbeing, including subjective wellbeing, with a negative trend in how people feel about their lives and about the quality of their relationships since the pandemic.
Youth in particular are experiencing a gloomy trend. Indeed, in most countries and historically, life satisfaction drops gradually from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood, but although youth still report higher life satisfaction than the rest at the global level, the gap is narrowing. Youth happiness fell in North America, Western Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia, while it increased elsewhere. In North America, youth happiness has fallen so sharply that now the young are less happy than the elderly.
In addition to these global trends, we could also cite specific examples of the disconnect between material and subjective wellbeing, such as the disconnect between the Consumer Sentiment Index and key economic indicators seen in recent years in the United States. In fact, the Consumer Sentiment Index had traditionally been a rather good predictor of economic health in the United States, implying that people’s ability to assess intuitively the state of the economy was rather good. However, a disconnect started emerging in 2021 and it had become glaring by 2023, when despite some encouraging results for key economic indicators, consumer sentiment (as measured for example by the United States Michigan Consumer Sentiment) did not follow. This paradoxical example conveys the importance of considering and understanding people’s emotions and subjective assessments of their own lives.
The reasons behind any disconnect between subjective and material measures may be numerous and multidimensional, but they underlie our decisions and actions. The Edelman Trust Barometer may point to some explanations. For instance, the 2024 edition revealed that, in a context of widespread rapid innovation, we tend to emphasize the risks associated with it rather than the opportunities. The 2019 edition indicated that 80 per cent of people felt that the system was not working for them, and half of the population felt it was even failing them. In most advanced economies, parents feared that their children would be worse off than them. Astra Taylor (The Age of Insecurity) suggests the disconnect between subjective and material wellbeing may be related to inequality (perceiving that others are doing better) but also to insecurity, including job insecurity (anticipating the worst and fearing losing current levels of wellbeing). To cite Jeremy Bentham, “When insecurity reaches a certain point, the fear of loss hinders the enjoyment of what is possessed”.
Subjective wellbeing at work
In assessing our satisfaction with life, we usually grant a strong weight to our situation in the labour market and our job quality. The world of work is fast evolving, with deep changes associated with digitalization, the nature of the employment relationship, the restructuring and reorganizing of work, and emerging work arrangements including remote work. These profound changes have an impact on our worklife and relation to the world of work, and therefore on our overall levels of happiness and subjective wellbeing. Increasing widespread discontent with the current system points to the failure of existing social contracts to deliver on our expectations for social justice, security, and opportunity. Understanding inequality and insecurity (both objectively measured and subjectively perceived), particularly in the world of work, appear key to understanding current socioeconomic trends.
Job satisfaction, time-use satisfaction, and life satisfaction, are all entangled and interdependant. The (unweighted) average score among OECD countries with data is 7.5 for job satisfaction, 7.0 for time-use satisfaction, and 7.4 for life satisfaction (on a 0-10 scale where 0 is not at all satisfied and 10 is fully satisfied). In 63 per cent of OECD countries with data, job satisfaction scores higher on average than life satisfaction. Significantly, in none of those countries does satisfaction reflect deprivation levels (average scores under 5).
Across OECD countries, people spend around 6 hours per week interacting with friends and family, a tiny fraction of the time they spend working (even more so if unpaid work is considered). On average, 12.4 per cent of the population are unsatisfied with their time use, and 6.4 per cent with their lives in general (unweighted averages of OECD countries with available data).
Measurement frameworks and initiatives
Although feelings cannot be easily expressed on a numerical scale, numerous initiatives exist which try to do just that, including the World Happiness Report, the European Quality of Life Survey, the European Social Survey, and the OECD Better Life Index. Additionally, many wellbeing measurement frameworks combine objective and subjective measures, therefore recognizing the importance of subjective aspects of wellbeing. These frameworks also often recognize the importance of work to our wellbeing, and thus include objective and subjective measures of wellbeing at work and/or the impact of work on wellbeing. Some examples of such frameworks and initiatives, with an emphasis on the world of work, are:
The UN Expert Group on Wellbeing Measurement
Established by the 55th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, this group aims to create a Framework for Inclusive and Sustainable Wellbeing meeting user needs and reflecting producer constraints. The group includes six thematic task teams (on work, housing, digital wellbeing, subjective wellbeing, composite indices, and communications) to address all these issues, with clear overlaps.
OECD How’s Life? and Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Wellbeing
The OECD How’s Life? Wellbeing Framework and Database is an overarching framework containing 11 dimensions of current wellbeing (including several related to the world of work), covering material conditions and quality-of-life factors, as well as objective and subjective measures. The OECD has also notably produced Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Wellbeing, and recently conducted a stocktake of data collection efforts across OECD countries. An updated and expanded version of the guidelines is expected to be released before the end of 2025.
UNECE Handbook on Measuring Quality of Employment
This multidimensional framework for assessing job quality spans through seven dimensions, covering subjective components.
Wellbeing Research Center's Measuring Workplace Wellbeing
The Wellbeing Research Centre has carried out research on subjective workplace wellbeing encompassing evaluative wellbeing (overall job satisfaction and how workers evaluate their roles and tasks), affective wellbeing (emotional experiences at work, including feelings of stress, frustration, or happiness during the workday), and eudaimonic wellbeing (meaning and purpose of work), to assess how people feel at work and about their work.
Concluding remarks
Relying on single metrics to study the world of work or even the level of sustainable development may be tempting for its simplicity, but it can only provide an incomplete picture. A number of diverse, complementary, and multidimensional indicators are needed to have a more comprehensive view of the situation and a better understanding of where the biggest deficits lie. In times of deep structural changes shaking up people’s lives, complementing objective or material measures with subjective measures to account for people’s feelings and perceptions is essential. What is more, subjective measures of wellbeing, including wellbeing at work, should complement material measures in informing policymaking.
