Are you as joyful as you could be in your job? Probably not, unless you are a beauty therapist, hairdresser, cook or soldier, according to an annual survey of workplace satisfaction.

The City & Guilds Happiness Index uses the survey of 1,000 employees to support its claim that what’s important to us are our work relationships, rather than the amount of pay we receive – not least because higher-paid professional jobs came way down the index of self-reported happiness.

But is that really what’s going on? While the poll found that workers say that they rate good collegiate relationships and a good work-life balance more highly than pay, there may be two less-than-obvious factors behind this.

First is the “they would say that” effect. People tend to give survey questions the “correct” response, rather than the honest one, because we are wired to seek approval from those around us. Money or love? We know the warmer answer.

The second factor involves the simple truth that jobs attract certain personalities. You are more likely to hear a female beauty therapist describing herself as “bubbly” than a female barrister.

People in demanding, high-status jobs tend, of course, to be more ambitious. Ambition often stems from endemic dissatisfaction. After all, why feel driven to change the world if you are quite happy with how it is?

So, when we delve into the nether ranks of the survey, we find those griping malcontents, journalists, ranked at 13th. People who work in high finance are crying all the way to their banks – they come bottom of the scale.

Bankers are just below call-centre staff (that’s understandable). But they are also just below human resources people – the ones responsible for your happiness at work. That they can’t manage it for themselves indicates what a complex business happiness at work is.

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