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Last week, the UN published their World Happiness Report to coincide with International Day of Happiness. According to this year’s edition, Norway is the world’s happiest country, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. This year’s report includes a chapter focusing on happiness at work. It finds that unemployment causes a major fall in happiness, while for those in employment, quality of work can cause major variations in happiness.
Jo Ritzen writes in his article Happiness as a guide to labor market policy, “Active labor market policies that create more job opportunities increase happiness, which in turn increases productivity. Measures of individual happiness should therefore guide labor market policy more explicitly.”
Writing on unemployment and happiness, Rainer Winkelmann says “There is overwhelming evidence that unemployment takes a heavy toll on life satisfaction. The nonpecuniary cost of unemployment exceeds the pecuniary cost, and not conforming to the social work norm is one of the main drivers of loss of life satisfaction."
For further analysis on happiness and labor market policy, read:
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