Hourly employees happier than salaried

TORONTO - People paid by the hour tend to be happier than their salaried counterparts, says a new study.

“Much of our day-to-day lives are subject to various organisational practices of payment that can prime different ways of thinking, such as the monetary value of one’s time,” write study authors Sanford E. DeVoe and Jeffrey Pffer of the University of Toronto and Stanford.

They found that the way in which an employee is paid is tied to their feeling of happiness. They theorise that hourly wage-earners focus more attention on their pay than those who earn a salary.

That concrete, consistent focus on the worth of the employee’s time in each pay check influences the level of happiness the employee feels, says a Toronto university release.

Researchers explored the relationship between income and happiness by focusing on the organisational arrangements that make the connection between time and money.

These findings were published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB).