Study says NJ employees are happier than the national average

Everybody likes to complain about their job, but it turns out that New Jersey has a pretty happy workforce.

Who says so? A website called Deputy does. They did a study on the happiest workforces in each state.

The methodology is pretty simple:

To determine the states with the happiest workforces, Deputy surveyed more than 3,000 full-time and part-time American workers over two weeks in February 2023. We asked them questions about workplace happiness spanning subjects from satisfaction with benefits and work environment to how much they liked or disliked managers and coworkers.

The highest happiness score belonged to Maryland with a score of 100; New Jersey was 17th, which doesn’t seem that good, but our score of 75.72 is considerably higher than the national average of 66.30.

They also asked questions about what would make employees happier, and, shockingly, 91% said more money.

About 45% said better benefits would make them happier, while 35% said more PTO would do the trick. Only 14% said a different boss would make them happier.

Georgia and Minnesota were behind Maryland for the states with the happiest workers; California was dead last.

Our neighbors in New York and Pennsylvania were both less happy at work than the national average, while Delaware was one of the least happy states with a score of 35.

It’s hard to draw any conclusions based on geography; some southern states, like Louisiana (22.9) weren’t very happy, but others, like Alabama (84.29) and Georgia (92.003) were extremely happy.

Kansas- very happy (86.78) while one state south in Oklahoma, unhappy (51.13).