Workforce Developments

Top ten hardest working countries in the world

And the winner is... Korea, where the average employee worked 2,357 hours per year in 2006.

By comparison, American workers clocked in at an average of 1,797 hours per year, down 2% from 1,832 hours per worker per year in 1996. That ranks us #9 in the world. In other words, the average Korean works 560 hours per year more than the average American; 70 more 8-hour days, or 14 more 40-hour weeks.

For another comparison, a 40 hour work week adds up to 2,080 hours per year.

Here's the full top ten list (hours per worker per year):

1. Korea (2,357)
2. Greece (2,052)
3. Czech Republic (1,997)
4. Hungary (1,989)
5. Poland (1,985)
6. Turkey (1,918)
7. Mexico (1,883)
8. Italy (1,800)
9. United States (1,797) 
10. Iceland (1,794)

The new Factbook 2008 from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) offers a host of other data on labor, productivity, public finance, environment, quality of life and more. The OECD "uses its wealth of information on a broad range of topics to help governments foster prosperity and fight poverty through economic growth and financial stability." It's made up of 30 member countries, and is one of the world's largest sources of comparable economic and social statistics.

This table shows how how all 30 OECD countries compare:

Korean worker photo: AP, via Daylife

Best employers for workers over 50: 2007 update

AARP has announced this year's winners in its seventh annual Best Employers for Workers over 50. Topping the list are

1. SC Johnson of Racine, WI, with 35% of its 3,297 workers over 50
2. Mercy Health Center of Janesville, WI, with 28% of its 3,721 workers over 50
3. First Horizon National Corporation of Memphis, TN, with 23% of its 12,208 workers over 50
4. Scripps Health of San Diego, CA, with 31% of its 11,119 workers over 50
5. Stanley Consultants of Muscatine, IA, with 30% of its 1,018 workers over 50 (and woman recently named President and COO)
6. Lee Memorial Health System of Fort Myers, FL, with 37% of its 8,595 workers over 50
7. Leesburg Regional Medical Center of Leesburg, FL, with 38% of its 2,658 workers over 50
8. George Mason University of Fairfax, VA, with 48% of its 5,760 workers over 50
9. Principal Financial Group of Des Moines, IA, with 19% of its 13,100 workers over 50
10. Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston, MA, with 27% of its 19,480 workers over 50

What jumps out at you from this list? How about six of the top ten are in health services, a high demand industry where many employers are experiencing a shortage of skilled workers. If I counted right, about 20 of the top 50 (40%) are health-related employers. Two of the top ten are in financial services, another industry with high labor demand.

If you look at past years' top 50 lists you'll see a lot of the same employers repeated year after year. Is that because the best remain the best, or because not enough employers know about this list? All US companies with at least 50 employees are eligible to apply. Here's how the top 50 were selected. 

For the full list of this year's honorees, click here. You can also see the lists from 2006, 2005 and 2004.

Best employers for workers over 50

Later this month AARP will announce the winners of its annual Best Employers for Workers Over 50 award. Each year since 2004 they've honored fifty employers whose recruiting practices, workplace accommodations, benefits and career advancement opportunities are good for what AARP calls "mature workers.

As AARP points out, policies that are good for those workers are usually good for the workforce as a whole.

The AARP lists include private corporations and public agencies, for-profits and non-profits. Some employers appear on the list year after year; others come and go. To be considered, employers must submit a comprehensive application form. Obviously, some employers think it's worthwhile to reapply every year.

The 2006 list is below, in the order from the AARP site:

Click here for the 2005 and 2004 lists. The AARP website provides descriptions for each selected honoree, explaining why it was selected. This looks to be very useful info for employers who are trying to find ways to recruit and retain older workers.

This got me to wondering how well our national workforce development system is linked to AARP. A quick online search found an article where AARP calls Career One-Stops "Your best bet."  I also found a page where the Monterey (CA) Virtual One-Stop links to a wide range of resources at AARP.

Any readers know of any other good examples? Or have any suggestions for how we could connect?

Best jobs in America, part 3

CNN's Money.com has done it again, only this time they're specializing. They've figured out the twenty best jobs in America for each of the following types of people who might be looking for a career change:

• The young and the restless
• Parents returning to the workforce
• Military retirees heading into the private sector
• The over-50 crowd

For each job they give median pay, job growth projections for the next ten years, a general description of the career, and education or experience required. They also offer job tips for each of these four categories of job seekers.

But get this - after suggesting to older workers that they might enjoy jobs like teacher, religious leader or nonprofit executive, they caution:

Don't get too seduced by the idea of saintliness. It's easy to romanticize life as a teacher, a minister or an environmentalist. It's still work.

"People are looking for greater meaning," says Marc Freedman, CEO of Civic Ventures and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.

"Unfortunately, some of these fields are the most dysfunctional and low paying."

Anybody out there care to disagree?

If you can, teach

Ran into a colleague of mine the other day who recently made a career change, from teaching junior high school to program management at a small nonprofit. What's the difference between the two? She had this to say (I'm paraphrasing only slightly):

When I was teaching I had to create five plans every day. Then I had to implement them with 150 people who didn't want to do what I said. By comparison, this is like smoking dope on a beach in Jamaica. Why do they try to tell teachers we don't have any real skills?

Top ten most satisfying jobs in America

The most satisfying jobs in America are those that involve helping others. That's according to an article on LiveScience.com. They're reporting that the not-yet-released results of the 2006 General Social Survey find 47% of Americans to be satisfied with their jobs, while 33% are genuinely happy.

The data corroborates a report earlier this year by the Conference Board, which found that less than half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% satisfaction twenty years ago.

Who's most satisfied on the job? The top ten, in reverse order (percent who reported themselves satisfied), are

• Security & financial services salespersons (65%)
• Psychologists (67%)
• Painters and sculptors (67%)
• Education administrators (68%)
• Teachers (69%)
• Special education teachers (70%)
• Authors (74%)
• Physical therapists (78%)
• Firefighters (80%)
• Clergy (87%)

How about the least satisfying? Perhaps not surprisingly, the list includes people with little control over their day-to-day work, including laborers, apparel salespeople, roofers, cashiers, bartenders and waiters.

My job's worth more than yours

An article in Friday's L.A. Times on job losses from the implosion of the subprime mortgage industry included this quote from UCLA economist Ryan Ratcliff: "Each of these finance jobs is worth at least two construction jobs."

That's like nails on a blackboard to most of us in workforce development. After all, construction jobs have provided a pathway out of poverty and into the middle class to many people with limited education. And the construction workers I know think their jobs are worth quite a lot. So I emailed Ryan to ask him exactly what he meant.

He explained that when comparing 2004 data on gross state product per worker (productivity), construction generated about $90 of output per worker while the finance/insurance industry generated about $193 per worker. Personal income was $77,000 per construction worker, compared to $112,000 per finance/insurance worker. He concluded by saying, "Even though we're forecasting that construction will lose a lot more jobs than finance, each of the finance jobs we lose has twice the impact on state output."

I won't argue with him. After all, he's an economist. But this does get at an important issue we face: the inherent tension between economic development and workforce development. We've been trying in recent years to figure out how to work together better. Problem is, economic developers want to bring in the industries that will pay the highest wages, generate the best impact on the local economy, as shown by Dr. Ratcliff's stats. Those of us in workforce development want to create jobs that are within reach for people who don't have a lot of training and education, and will provide good wages, benefits and advancement opportunities. Few of the people we serve will ever qualify for jobs in finance, but there are lots of great workforce development programs out there to help people learn construction (check here and here, just for starters).

Everybody wants to know the worth of different jobs. I get loads of hits every day on this blog from people googling phrases like "what are the best jobs in America?" I suppose how we answer that question depends on where we sit.

Hate your job? Join the club.

Turns out, the person in the next cubicle, further down the assembly line, or ringing customers up at the next cash register hates her job as much as you do. The Conference Board just issued results of a survey that finds job satisfaction has plummeted over the past twenty years. Less than half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs today.

Perhaps not surprisingly, younger workers and those making less money are less satisfied than older workers and those earning more.

The study suggests that workforce development and career ladders in the workplace are particularly problematic. Less than 23% of workers are satisfied with bonus plans and promotion policies, and less than 30% of workers are satisfied with educational and job training programs.

Best companies to work for

A new take on the best jobs - how about the best companies to work for?  Fortune magazine ranks the top 100 annually, and in 2006 Genentech, Wegman's Food Markets and Valero Energy made the top three.  Three companies were singled out for offering some of the best benefits, including SAS Institute for child care, Republic Bancorp for telecommuting, and American Century Investments for work-life balance. 

There is an interactive "Find the Right Company for You" tool on the site, but I kept getting the message, "There were no companies to match your requirements."  I suppose I'll just stick with  being self-employed.

The rest of the Fortune top ten are rounded out with

• W.L. Gore and Associates
• Container Store
• Vision Service Plan
• J.M. Smucker
• REI
• S.C. Johnson

Fortune selects these companies based on "our evaluation of the policies and culture of each company and the opinions of the company’s own employees."  This includes a 57-question employee survey administered by the Great Place to Work Institute.  To participate in the study, a company must be nominated.  The companies must be at least seven years old and must have more than 1,000 employees in the U.S.  As we know from yesterday's post, that eliminates the majority of businesses in America.

Most prestigious jobs in America

Workforce Developments is always interested to see another take on "best" jobs, what they are and why people think they're so great.  The Harris Poll has just completed its annual survey of the Most Prestigious Occupations in America.  Not surprisingly, Firefighter, Doctor, Nurse and Scientist make up the top four.  I was surprised to see Teacher come in as the fifth most prestigious occupation.  I was shocked to learn that Teacher is the only occupation that has seen an increase in perceived prestige over the 29 years Harris has conducted this poll, and it has risen fully 23 points.  The second greatest change over time has been Lawyer, which has fallen 15 points. 

The Harris Poll is a proper phone survey, but it only ranks 23 different jobs.  They go through the list of occupations, asking respondents to rate each as "an occupation of very great prestige, considerable prestige, some prestige, or hardly any prestige at all."  Which is different from whether it pays well, is meaningful work, or if it's something you'd like to be when you grow up.  The top ten are rounded out with

• Military officer
• Police officer
• Priest/minister/clergyman
• Farmer
• Engineer

Coming in as the least prestigious of the 23 are

• Union leader
• Actor
• Business executive
• Stockbroker
• Real estate broker/agent 

Best jobs in America, part 2

Forget what Money Magazine and Salary.com have to say about software engineers and college professors - the Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.com reports that the best careers in America are 1) curriculum and instructional coordinators, 2) high school special ed teachers, and 3) hospital and clinic managers.  Their list is based on a survey of some of the happiest workers in America. 

CareerJournal hired Harris Interactive to administer an online survey of full time adult workers to find out who's satisfied with their jobs and what qualities describe their jobs.  Among the people most satisfied with their jobs the top four qualities were

• Good intellectual stimulation;
• Strong job security;
• High level of control and freedom in what to do; and
• Extensive direct contact with customers/clients. 

Then they looked at the Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to identify jobs that utilize those four qualities a great deal.  Rounding out the CareerJournal top eight based on those factors are

• Management consultants and analysts
• Medical researchers
• Physical therapists
• Sales, marketing and advertising managers
• Social workers, counselors and related managers

Worth noting on this survey is that a striking 44% of respondents reported they were "totally satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their current jobs.  This compares to 14% of Americans who reported they were "very satisfied" with their jobs on a Conference Board survey last year. 

Did CareerJournal's online survey generate an unrepresentative sample of happy people?  Are people who choose to take online surveys particularly compliant?  I'd be interested to see a survey - and not the online sort - of people who work in these eight jobs to find out just how satisfied they really are.

The best jobs in America

Software engineers have the best job in America.  Being a college professor is second best.  Both positions on average pay only 65% of the nation's third best job, financial advisor, but they have less stress and more creativity. 

At least, that's according to a new list of the Fifty Best Jobs in America by Money magazine and Salary.com.  To build their list they started with a WorkforceDev favorite, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for data on jobs projected to grow by at least an above-average rate for the next ten years.  Jobs with low pay (less than $50,000 a year) and those in dangerous work environments were eliminated, as were those with total employment of less than 15,000.  Then they rated the jobs according to stress level, flexibility in hours, working environment, creativity and ease of entry and advancement in the field.  (The website doesn't explain the sources of this latter data.) 

Rounding out Money's top ten are

• human resources manager
• physicial assistant
• market research analyst
• computer/IT analyst
• real estate appraiser
• pharmacist
• psychologist. 

Highest paying job on the list is #30 physician/surgeon, which will get you an average of $247,536.  Lowest paid is #34 landcape architect at $50,383. The fiftieth best job in America is school administrator.