Public Versus Private Job Satisfaction. Is there a Trade-off between Wages and Stability?

Abstract

consensus, however, on whether these differences lead to greater job satisfaction and if, on average, the public sector employee job satisfaction is higher than that of those in the private sector.The results in the different studies are also conditioned by the cultural, economic and socio-political context of the reference country, so it is expected that the comparison of job satisfaction levels between public and private workers will differ in different regional contexts. Specifically, the Spanish labour market has certain characteristics that could influence public workers job satisfaction in relation to private ones. Firstly, the unemployment rate in Spain is considerably higher than that of other European countries in their immediate surroundings, such as Germany, United Kingdom, and France, especially in times of crisis. The elasticity of employment with respect to the economic cycle is very high, which means that, during recessions, such as the one experienced since 2008, the unemployment rate exceeds 25 percent. The second characteristic is the high rate of temporality that characterizes the Spanish labour market. During economic booms, the proportion of temporary contracts usually exceeds 35 percent and during recessions, despite a reduction, it exceeds 25 percent 2 . These particularities could alter worker job perception, especially when considering public positions, which are more stable and permanent.If these aspects are considered, it is feasible that in the case of Spain, or any other country with similar characteristics, public sector employee job satisfaction will be higher than that of private sector employees. It is also feasible, in any case, that there will be a tradeoff between satisfaction with respect to salary and stability and working hours. In

Labor Market Precarity Shapes Perception of the Public Sector in the Eurozone

“…Our variable under study-working in the public sectorhas a positive and significant influence on job satisfaction, in line with our initial hypothesis and the works of Steel and Warner (1990), Maidani (1991), DeSantis and Durst (1996), Demoussis and Giannakopoulos (2007), and Sánchez-Sánchez and Fernández (2020). The coefficient is positive even when variables associated with job instability are included, which implies that there are other factors that justify greater satisfaction in the public sector.…”

Are public employees more satisfied than private ones? The mediating role of job demands and job resources

“…The first outcome of the present study revealed that public employees are more satisfied with their work than their private counterparts. This is the first evidence of this sort obtained from Spain and aligns with previous studies that also confirm greater satisfaction among public employees (Demoussis and Giannakopoulos, 2007;Mihajlov and Mihajlov, 2016b;S anchez-S anchez and Fern andez Puente, 2020;Steel and Warner, 1990;Steijn, 2008; Notes: þ p < 0.1; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 Zeffane and Bani Melhem, 2017). Although generalizability is not recommended as these countries may have different working conditions, Demoussis and Giannakopoulos (2007) used a sample of Greek employees and Zeffane and Bani Melhem (2017) used a sample of public and private employees from the service sector in the United Arab Emirates and provided results that confirmed our findings.…”

“…One of the Mediating role of job demands debates in the literature on employee satisfaction in the public sector has to do with the question of whether public employees are more or less satisfied than their private sector counterparts (Bright, 2008). Whereas some studies have found that public employees are more satisfied (Demoussis and Giannakopoulos, 2007;Mihajlov and Mihajlov, 2016b;S anchez-S anchez and Fern andez Puente, 2020;Steel and Warner, 1990;Steijn, 2008;Zeffane and Bani Melhem, 2017), others have found the opposite (Borges, 2013;Burke and Singh, 2016). Therefore, the debate is still open.…”

Job Satisfaction and Implications for Organizational Sustainability: A Resource Efficiency Perspective

“…Or it might simply be that women pay more attention to different resources than men do. Somewhat surprisingly, the analysis did not uncover any striking differences in efficiency levels between private and public sectors, despite several previous studies explicitly distinguishing and comparing job satisfaction measures between private and public sector domains [46][47][48].…”