A multilevel analysis of job satisfaction in Britain - WERS 2004

other hand, having skills that are a bit or much higher than the skills required bythe job is found to have a significant negative effect on ‘overall job satisfaction’,‘satisfaction with the sense of achievement’, ‘satisfaction with the scope forusing own initiative’. For women, working in jobs that require skills ‘muchhigher’ than own skills have a significant negative effect on ‘overall’ as well asall the other facets of job satisfaction. Being in jobs that require ‘a bit higher’level of skills than own skills, on the other hand, affect significantly negatively‘overall satisfaction’ and four of the eight facets of job satisfaction relating to‘satisfaction with training opportunity’, ‘satisfaction with pay’, ‘satisfaction withinvolvement in decision making’ and ‘satisfaction with the work itself’. Being ina job that requires ‘a bit or much’ lower level of skills than one’s own has asimilar negative and significant effect on job satisfaction for women. This is thecase for ‘overall’ job satisfaction and all facets of job satisfaction with theexception of ‘satisfaction with scope for taking own initiative’ and ‘satisfactionwith influence on the job’.Other employee level correlates: Other employee fixed effects are not found tohave significant effects across the satisfaction measures considered. However,they do provide some interesting reading. Two of the correlates that deserve amention in particular are employee’s occupation and level of pay. Accordingly,workers in ‘associate professions & technical occupations’, ‘administrative &secretarial occupations’, ‘personnel service occupations’ and ‘sales and customerservices occupations’ are significantly less likely to be satisfied with the‘influence they have on their job’ for the full sample, compared with ‘managersand senior officials’. Likewise, workers in all but ‘skilled trades’ occupations aresignificantly less likely to be satisfied with their ‘involvement in decisionmaking’ vis-à-vis their counterparts in ‘managers and senior officials’occupations for the full sample. These patterns of significance of occupation onjob satisfaction hold even strongly when we look at the estimates for men andwomen separately. In fact, in these models the observed significance holds for‘overall job satisfaction’ and few more facets of job satisfaction including thoserelating to ‘satisfaction with the sense of achievement’, ‘satisfaction with thescope for own initiative’, ‘satisfaction with pay’ and ‘satisfaction with the levelof security at the job’.In terms of the effect of the amount of gross weekly pay employees get on theirjob satisfaction, the estimation results reported in Table 1 indicate that comparedwith those that receive a weekly gross pay of between £141 and £220, those thatreceive a weekly pay of over £360 are significantly more likely to be satisfiedwith the amount of pay they receive for the full sample. The models estimatedseparately for men and women show a similar pattern in terms of the effect of theamount of weekly pay on the facet of job satisfaction relating to pay. Theadditional finding in these models is that those with a higher level of weekly payare also found to be significantly less likely to be satisfied with ‘the level oftraining’ they get at the workplace vis-à-vis their counterparts earning a weeklypay of between £141 and £220. 1313 However, there is a slightly odd finding that those that receive a weekly gross pay of at most£140 are also found to be significantly more likely to be satisfied with the amount of pay theyreceive compared with the reference group of workers that receive a weekly pay of between £14111