Age, Education, Job Tenure, Salary, Job Characteristics, and Job Satisfaction: A Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

The relationship of age to job satisfaction was investigated. Subjects were 1707 public employees in the United States who responded to questionnaires. The results showed that job satisfaction increased with age. Younger employees were less satisfied overall with their jobs, but especially with the intrinsic characteristics of the work. Older employees were more satisfied with the extrinsic characteristics than were the two younger groups of employees. When the effects of salary, job tenure, and education were removed independently as well as simultaneously, the same differences were found. However, when the effect of job characteristics was added to the combination and partialled out, the intrinsic characteristics factor was no longer significant.