Trophy jobs
| • | Chart (opens in a new window): Occupations held in high esteem |
By Del Jones
USA Today
Think it doesn't matter what that stranger at the party thinks when you tell him or her what you do for a living? Think again.
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These days, you can speak proudly if you're a firefighter or a scientist. Those are among the professions to which the public still assigns great prestige.
Scientists, including molecular biologists, still rank at the top of a survey on how people perceive the prestige of any profession, even though the prestige rating has been falling. Firefighters also rank high on the prestige scale.
But a little embarrassment is understandable when you say you're an accountant or real estate agent. As important as those professions may be, there is a less than 1-in-10 chance that the person you're talking to believes your job carries great prestige and, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, the prestige of most occupations continues to spiral down.
The millions of us working jobs held in lesser regard often convince ourselves that job satisfaction has nothing to do with what other people's opinion. Think again.
According to an increasing body of evidence, how much prestige the outside world assigns to a job plays a sizable role in job satisfaction. That could portend consequences, not only for the well-being of workers and the success of companies, but also for the health of the economy.
• Teachers have made a prestige leap in the eyes of the public. In 1977, 29 percent of us assigned great prestige to that job. By 2004, it was 48 percent, according to a separate Harris survey sponsored by the MetLife Foundation. During roughly the same period, the percentage of teachers who say they are very satisfied with teaching as a career rose from 40 percent to 57 percent.
• An unscientific online survey of 865 physicians by The Doctors, a medical liability insurance carrier, has found that 70 percent would not encourage their children to become doctors, an about-face from when their parents all but herded them into medical school. Since 1977, Harris says, the prestige that the public assigns to medical doctors has slipped from 61 percent to 52 percent, and the nation may face a shortage of 85,000 to 200,000 doctors in 15 years.
• Two million manufacturing jobs were lost in the last recession, yet the National Association of Manufacturers forecasts a shortage of 10 million skilled manufacturing workers by 2020, largely because students in middle school through college describe such jobs as "repetitious," "tedious," "boring," "dark" and "dirty." That career would be like serving a life sentence or being on a chain gang, they say, according to report titled "Keeping America Competitive: How a Talent Shortage Threatens U.S. Manufacturing."
Last year, the Association for Manufacturing Technology brought 6,095 students and 578 educators to see a modern plant. The students left impressed, says AMT President John Byrd, but he adds that parents must be shown the prestige of a high-tech manufacturing job, or they steer their children away.
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During his tenure as CEO of Symmetry Medical from 1996 to 2002, Byrd thought he was making an impression when he took high school guidance counselors on a tour of a state-of-the-art factory. But he still remembers one remarking that he would not want his son working there because he'd rather see him in a shirt and tie.
Doctors, while still at the top of prestige ratings, often say they don't want their children to follow their footsteps and become doctors also. The reason could be the soaring cost of malpractice insurance.
Unfortunately for most of us, there are very few professions that have not experienced an erosion in prestige during the past 30 years. While the percentage of those who assign teachers great prestige has risen since 1977, lawyers have slipped from 36 percent to 17 percent, priests and ministers from 41 percent to 32 percent, engineers from 34 percent to 29 percent, athletes from 26 percent to 21 percent, and journalists from 17 percent to 14 percent.
Keeping employees satisfied and productive is the age-old management conundrum on which the experts rarely agree. The prestige-satisfaction link is no exception. Doctors, for example, conclude that the reason they no longer want their children to be doctors is not the slump in prestige but the spiraling cost of malpractice insurance.
Similarly, job prestige and satisfaction may also rely on business success, which can be ephemeral. Consider the prestige of working at Enron in 1999 vs. 2001.
Scientists still have the highest prestige of any profession. Even so, it has fallen 14 percentage points since the first survey in 1977, and likely more since the 1969 moon landing. Scientists often have lonely, isolated jobs, but those with the most satisfaction tend to be working on something with a potential to make a difference, such as a drug for cancer, or something that helps solve the energy crisis, says Curt Carlson, CEO of SRI International, a nonprofit that employs 2,000 scientists and researchers and is known as the birthplace of the computer mouse.
That observation is supported by University of Michigan research presented last year at the American Psychological Society convention. It found that the most satisfied workers were those who felt they had a positive impact on others — to the point that many firefighters wished they could fight more fires.
Marcus Buckingham is author of "The One Thing You Need to Know" and an expert on employee satisfaction and productivity, known as employee "engagement." He says there are plenty of engaged workers doing the most menial work. He learned that years ago when he studied the best hotel maids at the Walt Disney resorts. Likewise, some of the most disengaged people he has encountered are those at the very top of companies.
There is nobility in every profession, Buckingham says, and the key is not to be mediocre. Show him a teacher who settles for mediocre, he says, and he'll show you a teacher who is not satisfied.
Some companies have made attempts at making their jobs more prestigious:
• 7-Eleven's three-decade sponsorship of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon is partly meant to generate pride and prestige in working for the company. But tending to prestige can be negated by a single Jay Leno joke about 7-Eleven employees, says spokeswoman Margaret Chabris, who dashes off letters whenever the company feels it has been the butt of an unfair joke. She says she once picked up the phone, and it was Leno with an apology.
• RailAmerica, an 1,860-employee company that operates short-line railroads, hired a public-relations firm to inform the news media that its employees have rescued at least five people from burning cars and frigid water during the past two years.
• New employees at Red Wing Shoes receive a welcome box that includes photographs of Red Wing boots in the possession of President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth, an effort to give new hires a historic sense of prestige. Red Wing is one of the last to manufacture footwear in the United States, and Chief Operating Officer Dave Murphy says the company's success is due largely to the pride that Red Wing's 2,100 employees — including 1,450 in manufacturing — have in making a product with prestige.
