<p>People do study this, and it’s worth considering. According to the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, job satisfaction is highest in the following occupations:</p>
<ol>
<li>Clergy</li>
<li>Physical therapist</li>
<li>Firefighter</li>
<li>School principal</li>
<li>Artist</li>
<li>Teacher</li>
<li>Author</li>
<li>Psychologist</li>
<li>Special ed teacher</li>
<li>Construction machinery operator</li>
</ol>
<p>This kind if research is relatively meaningless. Any statistician will tell you that you should not compare unlike populations, and the types of people who go into these professions are certainly unlike those that become Engineers, Accountants, Business General Managers, and Wall Street traders, sales reps, or any of countless other professions.</p>
<p>A person with an air traffic controller personality will probably not make a good special ed teacher the air traffic controller wants constant action. I was an author for the first three years after I graduated from college, wrote for prestigious magazines, and I hated it. Most of the time, I worked in front of a typewriter (now it would be a word processor ). I quit, and essentially went into business. Im now a business consultant.</p>
<p>Personally, being a firefighter strikes me as boring waiting long hours for an alarm to go off. Ive watched construction machinery operators, and although many may love their jobs, I would want to quit after a day or two. This comes down to personality and countless other factors.</p>
<p>Unless you randomly assign people into these professions at the start and do a long-term, longitudinal study, research such as this doesnt separate the persons personality, drive, intelligence and general level of happiness they inherently have from their choice of profession. And obviously, we cant force people into certain professions randomly just to conduct a 40-year study.</p>