Subjective Well-Being Across the Sectors: Examining Differences in Workers’ Life Satisfaction and Daily Experiential Well-Being

Abstract

Research on cross-sector differences has long demonstrated that workers in public and nonprofit sectors are more prosocially and intrinsically motivated, which in turn shapes their work behavior and outcomes, but little evidence exists on how public service employment is associated with workers’ life quality outside of the organizational context. Using cross-sectional data pooled from the Well-being Module of the American Time Use Survey, we investigate whether sectors of employment can predict workers’ subjective well-being (SWB) beyond the work domain. The results suggest public servants across all levels of government as well as nonprofit organizations experience higher life satisfaction than their for-profit counterparts. However, there are different patterns in daily experiential well-being across levels of government. Further analyses by work and non-work days demonstrate that work itself is likely to be a key factor affecting workers’ daily experience across sectors. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.