Accountants Among the Happiest Workers in the U.S., New Study Finds

New research by international telecommunications provider TollFreeForwarding.com reveals that accounting and tax is the second-happiest industry to work in.

The Los Angeles-based company analyzed Glassdoor review data for 200 companies across 10 industries and ranked them based on the following six criteria:

• Culture and values
• Diversity and inclusion
• Work-life balance
• Compensation
• Career opportunities
• Senior management satisfaction

Each industry was scored on a scale of 1 to 100 for each category, as well as an overall average. The construction industry came in first, with an average score of 72.2 out of 100. Construction workers were also the most satisfied with their compensation (73.1) and the cultures and values in their industry.

The second-most satisfied industry was accounting and tax (71.92), which also scored the highest in the career opportunities category (75.3). Manufacturing came in third overall.

“It’s clear that job satisfaction plays an important role in employee retention, and research shows that happy employees are more productive than those dissatisfied with their jobs,” Jason O’Brien, COO of TollFreeForwarding.com, said in a statement. “As our findings show, employee satisfaction is based on a variety of factors, from workplace culture and compensation to opportunities and management. Businesses that want to retain their employees need to focus on all these factors, as the top-ranking industries scored highly across the board.”