American jobs offer more autonomy -- and more stress

In brief:

• American jobs have become more stressful, but also give workers more independence over the last two decades.
• Wages haven't increased to compensate for the extra stress, despite workers' preference. 
• Women are taking more stressful, autonomous jobs than men, study found. 

American jobs have become increasingly stressful over the past two decades—but workers have also gained greater ability to exercise independence and make decisions at work. 

Yet workers generally are not being paid more to compensate for the added stress, according to a working paper examining how the health-related characteristics of U.S. jobs have changed over nearly two decades.

“What we found is that this evolution towards more stressful jobs is not due to the fact that workers are taking different jobs now than they did 20 or 25 years ago,” said study co-author Fabien Postel-Vinay, a research professor in SMU Department of Economics. “Most of the change is within occupations.” 

Grégory Jolivet of the University of Bristol and the Institute for Fiscal Studies was also a co-author of the study. 

Rising stress in America’s workforce over 18 years

The researchers analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET database and the Current Population Survey to measure three aspects of jobs that can affect workers’ health: psychological demands, decision latitude and physical demands.

For 481 occupations – ranging from janitors and retail salesmen to computer programmers and chief executives – the economists were able to get detailed information about employment, wages and worker conditions from 2008 to 2025.

The findings clearly show that employment in the U.S. has shifted toward jobs that are psychologically demanding yet simultaneously also offer greater decision latitude. 

“According to our O*NET-based measures, psychological demands in the average job have risen by 1.5% over the past two decades, while the level of decision latitude increased by 3% over the same period,” Postel-Vinay said.

SMU economics research professor Fabien Postel-Vinay said jobs in the United States are shifting toward being more psychologically demanding, yet workers are not being paid more to compensate for the added stress. Credit: SMU.

The researchers also examined how much American workers value different job characteristics by estimating what economists call marginal willingness to pay — essentially, how much of their wages workers would be willing to give up for a better job attribute. 

They found that the compensation required by workers for a stressful job has risen over time.

Stress isn’t reflected in workers’ pay

When economists compared workers’ preference with actual wages, they found no evidence of corresponding compensation for psychological demands. Wages associated with stressful jobs remained essentially unchanged over the study period. 

“That tells us there are some frictions on the labor market that prevent people from moving to their ideal job, at least when it comes to that,” Postel-Vinay said. 

The same pattern appeared in physical demands. Workers generally appeared to dislike more physically demanding work, but the researchers found that workers were not compensated for it. In fact, jobs with greater physical demands were associated with lower wages.

Greater decision-making freedom presented an opposite — and unexpected — pattern. Workers increasingly valued having more control over their jobs, and jobs offering greater decision latitude also tended to pay more.

Women take more stressful, autonomous jobs than men

The research also found that men and women have different levels of stress because of the jobs they took.   

Women, on average, reported working in more psychologically demanding, autonomous jobs than men throughout the study period, while men tended to work in more psychically demanding jobs. But women were also underrepresented in highly-paid occupations.

“While the gender wage gap has narrowed slowly but steadily between 2008 and 2022, we find no evidence that the ‘true’ gap in well-being for men and women has improved,” he said. “Rather, it seems to have remained stable."

For Postel-Vinay, that underscores why looking at wages alone does not tell the full story of a worker’s experience or the economic inequality that might quietly exist. 

“It’s important to also understand whether workers are going to maybe more stressful jobs or less rewarding jobs in other dimensions,” he said.