Happier at Work: Two Big Reasons Why Job Satisfaction Is Declining
Roughly half of IT pros are happy, according to Spiceworks’ recent study of IT professionals. This is trending downward, with more respondents choosing “somewhat happy” or “not happy at all” over the past two years.
If you’re a full-time employee, you spend around 2,000 hours — roughly 1/4 of your total available time – at work every year.
With your employer claiming such a large chunk of your time — perhaps your most precious resource — it’s important to find a job you enjoy. But that’s not necessarily an easy task. According to a 2022-2024 Spiceworks study on job satisfaction only half of IT professionals were happy at their current job in 2024.
Also somewhat concerning: Our data shows a downward trend where happiness among IT professionals has been declining slightly in recent years. In 2022, 62% of study participants reported being happy at work, but by 2024, that figure had fallen to 52%.
But why has job satisfaction been declining? In our analysis from the same study, we uncovered five workplace factors that contribute most to job happiness:
- Satisfaction with company culture
- Belief that management supports workers
- Adequate opportunities for career growth
- Work being rewarding
- Satisfaction with salary
When we dug deeper into shifts within these factors between 2022 and 2024, two noticeable trends stood out.
Declining Support from Management
In 2022, more respondents were 1.5x as likely to agree than disagree that management sets them up for success. But by 2024, responses had flipped, with slightly more survey respondents disagreeing that their management was doing a good job helping them succeed.
Declining Career Optimism
We saw a similar negative shift in sentiment for beliefs about career prospects. While in 2022, IT professionals were slightly more likely to be satisfied with their potential for career growth (38%) vs. unsatisfied (32%), by 2024 they were 1.5x as likely to be unsatisfied.
Real-World Commentary on Declining Workplace Happiness
While the aggregate data tells the story of change in job satisfaction over time, so too do comments from IT professionals who are members of the Spiceworks Community.
jeffjones11 on declining job prospects and salaries:
“I completely agree that salaries seem to be flat or are even declining for IT workers while IT consumers (be they individuals or companies) seem to want more for less. Organizations that provide IT services respond to that market pressure – supply and demand after all – and it is the lowly IT worker that feels the squeeze of lower wages and increased demands.”
davecork on a disconnect between management and staff:
“I believe we are a microcosm of what’s going on globally. Workers are continually being asked, nay expected, to do more work without a commensurate increase in pay. Meanwhile, the pay gap between the C-suite and workers continues to widen.
Employers expect loyalty from workers, but do not reciprocate.”
While the two-year trend is concerning, things could certainly change in the future depending on a variety of factors, including macroeconomic conditions.
Stay tuned: We will continue to monitor sentiment among IT professionals through surveys and candid conversations in the Spiceworks Community.
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