Today at Work: How workers feel about their pay, and why it matters

An employee’s pay is quantifiable– but how much do we know about how people feel about their pay and what kinds of behaviors these feelings relate to?

Do people feel paid fairly for the work they do? Which industries are most dissatisfied with their pay, and which are the happiest? Does someone’s race, or education level, or part-time versus full-time status, or gender affect these feelings? Why should any of us even care about how workers feel about their pay? What negative or positive outcomes does a feeling of inequity drive in the workplace?

For the first time, Dr. Nela Richardson and Marcus Buckingham, co-heads of the ADP Research Institute, are able to answer these questions – and more – about people’s feelings about their pay as they examine the findings from the first Today at Work report.

The Today at Work report is a quarterly workforce report that blends ADP’s extensive data set representing 25 million people with monthly worker sentiment surveys from a stratified random sample of 2,500 workers to provide a recurring, people-centered, and comprehensive view of the world of work. With this unprecedented analysis into the employee’s job lifecycle, ADP Research Institute is able to answer these questions and more with their exceptional data set and unique measurement tools for capturing how people feel about the workplace and how those feelings drive their actions.