When trying to decide on a new career, aside from the potential earnings available, one of the most important questions is will I be happy in my new career. There’s little point in earning a high wage if we go to work miserable every day. It makes sense then that if you are considering a career as an electrician one of the questions you will be asking is, Are Electricians happy?
I thought the best way to tackle this topic was to poll online audiences and some of my electrician colleagues to find out if they are happy at work. From a personal point of view, I’m very happy being an electrician but I wanted to find out if I’m in the majority or the minority.
From our research, we can see that 75% of electricians polled answered that they were happy while only 12.5% said they were outright not happy. The main reasons given for the high happiness levels were enjoying the work, feeling respected, being able to live comfortably and having fun at work.
As readers can see from the snippet above, I decided the best way to answer this question was to conduct a poll among fellow electricians. Below is a table showing the results of this poll. It may not be the most scientific method but I think it gives a good overall impression of whether or not electricians are happy.
Poll Asking Electrcians, “Are You Happy?”
| Are You Happy At Work? | Number of Electricians Who Answered |
|---|---|
| Yes | 12 |
| No | 2 |
| Sometimes | 2 |
We can see from our poll that out of 16 electricians polled, 12 of them said they were happy and enjoyed their work. I’m pleased that this was the result as I think being an electrician is a really enjoyable career and I’m glad others share the same viewpoint! (If your looking for a quick way to make the electrician in your life happy this list of 15 electrician gift ideas may help!)
I think for any individual we can break being happy down into a few categories such as: are we happy in our career, do we feel respected, is our work fun at times and are we able to live a comfortable life. By answering these questions below we will get an understanding of why such a high percentage of electricians polled answered that they are indeed happy!
Are Electricians Happy with Their Career?
We can see from above that the majority of electricians are happy with their careers. I also decided to look at the online forums to gauge the consensus as to why electricians are happy with their jobs. The majority were positive about the work itself and one commenter on Reddit even said, “If for whatever reason I was given 10 million dollars, I’d show up for work the next day. Probably with a whole mess of shiny new tools.” What better way to show you are happy in your job than that! If you want to see my list of 15 most essential tools I’ll link to the article here.
It’s worth noting that many of the electricians I spoke to and the forum threads I investigated all said that their boss had a huge influence on how happy they were at work. I know on a personal level that the foreman, or chargehand as they are sometimes called, has a huge effect on the enjoyment of the job.
These supervisors are responsible for running the jobs and giving us daily tasks. An understanding foreman who is experienced on the tools makes life so much easier. They understand the challenges we face and can offer up sound advice. A bad foreman who doesn’t listen, or is only concerned with profit, tends to have a very negative effect on site morale and can definitely make the electricians on site unhappy.
Is Being an Electrician Fun?
In my experience being an electrician is fun. Although it is a job that carries a large amount of responsibility and can be very dangerous if performed incorrectly, the atmosphere on-site is usually good fun. This level of fun and camaraderie doesn’t often exist within the confines of an office environment.
Adding to the enjoyment is the fact that we often get to do fun tasks whilst at work. You can often see electricians driving elevated work platforms (MEWPs for short) swinging around high up in the air. Depending on your head for heights, this kind of work can be good fun.
Another fun and enjoyable aspect of the job is visiting all the various sites. When one job becomes boring it isn’t the end of the world as we are usually moving onto the next workplace pretty quickly. I’ve had the good fortune to work at many cool places such as airports and wind farms and these can definitely be fun places to work.
Are Electricians Respected?
Electricians are highly respected among the community and this adds to their overall happiness levels. Although classed as traditional blue-collar workers, being an electrician is a highly skilled trade and brings with it financial rewards as well as professional respect from others.
Whilst some people don’t care what others think and whether they are respected or not, in my opinion, it does help happiness levels knowing that others think we are doing a good job. It definitely makes me happy when a customer says thank you so much at the end of a job or they look and comment, “how do you know where all those wires go?”
Measuring respect is difficult to quantify. I asked my colleagues if they felt they were respected as electricians and the majority said yes. A few said that they didn’t always feel respected but this had a lot to do with the site they were working on at the time. Sometimes when working in places like universities or hospitals it can feel like we are getting in the way even though we are just trying to do our jobs! Overall respect is a huge part of being happy as an electrician and in my opinion, the majority of people show us a fair amount of respect.
Do Electricians Live Comfortably?
The majority of electricians live very comfortably with some even making over 100k a year. Being financially comfortable is a huge part of overall happiness levels and is perhaps a large part of the reason why the majority of electricians polled said they were happy.
Even if we don’t reach the grand heights of making 100k a year (discussed here) the average wage still allows us to live a comfortable life. Perhaps not being mega-rich is part of the reason electricians are happy? they have financial security but not so much money that going to work seems pointless.
Another reason being an electrician is comfortable is that there is plenty of work all around the country and even all around the world. Electricians don’t often have to look very far afield in order to find good-paying secure work. Having plenty of work available has a large impact on happiness levels and for the foreseeable future, the high workload does not seem to be slowing down.
Conclusion
I started this article by looking at the question, are electricians happy? The research I conducted clarified how I personally feel; that the majority of electricians are happy with their work. It seems the main reasons for the high percentage of happy electricians are simply enjoying going to work each day, feeling respected and earning enough money to live a comfortable life.
It seems unlikely that you will become a millionaire by becoming an electrician but that is a separate topic to whether or not electricians are happy. It seems that the majority of electricians are like myself in that they simply enjoy going to work each day which makes them happy.
