According to a survey of 22,500 British workers in 81 different occupations, IT professionals - who make a substantial share of white collar workers in any nation - ranked a mere 66th in worker satisfaction. This is despite the (supposedly) higher compensation for those in the field. The researchers attributed IT worker blues to a number of factors. For instance, "because IT moves so fast, [IT workers] live in constant fear that the skills they have at a given moment will suddenly go out of date, and they'll become much less valuable." They are also required to work a little too much, making themselves available via email and pagers around the clock.

In contrast to IT folks, hairdressers - who work with people, not flowcharts and source code - came in second, just behind "fat-cat corporate managers". Teachers, once ranked at 54, are now ranked at 11, due in part to improved pay as well as to the traditional satisfactions of mentoring the young.

Here is yet more evidence that corporate white collar life - with its focus on the abstract and the trivial, its arbitrary bureaucracy and its lack of opportunity for either self-expression or authentic human contact - is dispiriting to millions, despite its occasional economic rewards.

"Hairdressers have jobs to dye for, study says: They're a lot happier than IT professionals, U.K. researchers find" from Times Colonist(Canada)