Your grandparents' idea of a 'good job' was probably based on a salary and benefits — and 50 years later, things haven't changed all that much
Annafi Wahed left her job at a consulting firm in 2016, to work on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
When she approached her boss to give her two weeks' notice, he thought she was joking.
"I was up for manager that year; I was making six figures," Wahed, now 28 years old, told me. Her boss "couldn't fathom" that she was giving it up to go "knock on doors," and was suspicious that she was instead switching to another job in finance.
But as soon as she announced her departure, Wahed said, she knew she'd made the right decision. "It felt like the weight had been lifted off my shoulders."
Wahed went on to discover that she had more than just a passing interest in politics. Even after the campaign was over, it excited her in a way that the financial world never really had. Today, Wahed is the founder of The Flip Side, a daily news digest that summarizes political analysis from conservative and liberal media. On the side, she works as a data analyst for a nonprofit organization.
Wahed and I scheduled a phone call for 9 a.m., and when she answered, she said she'd just woken up, having stayed up late working on a project for The Flip Side. But she wouldn't trade her current lifestyle for something more traditional or less stressful, she said — this is her passion.
I spoke to Wahed (who went to my high school and was two years behind me), and more than a dozen other people at different stages of their lives and careers, as part of an investigation: What is a "good" job today? And while I didn't come up with a definitive answer — that depends heavily on factors such as a person's age and skill level, and whether they have kids — I did begin to see some unifying themes.
The definition of a good job has changed over time
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this exploration of what a good job means might have looked very different 50 years ago.
Rebecca Fraser-Thill, the director of faculty engagement in the Bates Center for Purposeful Work at Bates College and a career coach with the Pivot program (I was one of her coaching clients in 2017), said previous generations of workers wanted security and stability from their employers. Today's workers don't necessarily expect that — instead, they want a sense of personal fulfillment, whether that comes from one job, two jobs, or a job and a side hustle.
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The declining prevalence of pensions has played a big role in shaping employees' expectations from work: According to a 2014 report from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the number of American workers with a defined benefit plan (i.e. a pension, which provides a specific amount of money in retirement) decreased from 62% in 1983 to 17% in 2013.
Results from a Business Insider survey of 1,000 in early December suggest that today's young workers aren't operating under any delusions about how much security their employers can provide them. Respondents ages 18 to 29 were 19 percentage points less likely than the average respondent to say a pension is essential to a good job. Respondents over 60, on the other hand, were 13 percentage points more likely.
And while it's been a long time since pensions were standard practice, even a decade ago, this article might have turned out differently.
Brie Reynolds, a career coach and the career specialist at FlexJobs, told me that after the 2008 economic downturn, people realized their jobs might not last forever. As a result, Reynolds said, they started to think about how they wanted work to fit into their overall life. That is to say, work was no longer the biggest focus. Indeed, in the Business Insider survey, the third most popular choice for essential aspects of a a good job was work/life balance (74%).
Money and benefits are still a priority for many
The same Business Insider survey, which asked people for the factors they consider essential to a good job, highlighted three popular aspects: health insurance (87%), paid vacation (75%), and a 401(k) or other retirement account (73%).
Salary is especially important for today's recent college grads, who are often saddled with massive student debt. The average student loan debt for Class of 2017 graduates who borrowed money was $39,400, according to a report from Student Loan Hero.
Wahed readily admitted that her work at the consulting firm was "not what got me up in the morning. What really only got me up was paying off my student loans and making good money." At the time, not having a full-time job and continuing to wallow in debt just didn't seem like options.
"I'm a first-generation immigrant," she told me. She remembered moving to the US with her mother at eight years old, struggling through ESL classes in elementary school. "Part of me was definitely like, 'I need a steady job. I can't just go around bumming through life after college.'"