Why Your Workplace Happiness Dips Mid-Career

Past research has shown that workplace happiness (or wellbeing) dips mid-career, starting around late twenties (cue the ’08 graduates cries of “that’s supposed to be mid-career?!”) and recovering in the early forties. A new study now has a reason for why this may be so: demands on time increase, while support for co-workers decreases.

The study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, looked at survey responses from 800 men who reported on job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. What they found was that reported support from co-workers underwent the same dip as job satisfaction, and pressure at work experienced a hump much like emotional exhaustion.

So what’s going on? Well, promotional bottlenecks typically occur that this stage, and peers are competing for their bosses time and attention. It’s also worth pointing out that at least one previous study has mid-career people scoring the best at a number of areas of work—though it’s tough to tease out what might be related to a worker’s age and what might be related to their generation.

So, what can you do? Well, you can develop your self-control, find another way to develop happiness, or start taking it easy.

This is a test