I recently read a report from the Conference Board that showed that less than half of US workers – 45% to be specific – like their job which is the lowest result in the 22 years that they’ve been measuring it.

When the survey started in 1987, 61% of respondents were happy in their jobs but over the past 22 years, this number has steadily declined.

About one quarter of respondents also felt that they didn’t expect to hold their current jobs in one year’s time. I’m not sure if this is because they were planning on looking for a new job, felt they were going to be laid off or (more likely) a combination of both as it wasn’t expressly stated.

Having said that, I suspect a significant percentage of these respondents figure that they’re going to be laid off at some point in the next year and that perhaps there isn’t much they can do about it.

Over the past 22 years, this poll has shown that job satisfaction has steadily declined and specifically areas like job security and the interest in the job have dropped dramatically. Certainly 22 years ago while layoffs and downsizings occurred, they somehow didn’t seem to be as prevalent and widespread as they are today.

As a high school student in the late 1980s, I recall when IBM went through a large downsizing and I specifically remember thinking about what this must have meant to the thousands of employees and their families. For some reason, this downsizing in the late 1980s is one that I remember and that stands out for me even though it didn’t affect me personally.

For many people who find that they don’t like their current job, they might simply end up feeling that they are fortunate to have a job and stay put for at least the time being. The devil-you-know attitude is one that many people probably fall back on these days and figure that even if they’re not happy, perhaps the grass isn’t greener on the other side. Certainly if some of their friends have been laid off and are finding it hard to find a new job, those who are unhappily working but end up simply feeling fortunate that they are in fact working.