For the most part, people are happy in their 20s, then feel less satisfied in their 30s, bottoming out between the mid-40s and mid-50s before increasing again to levels as high as during young adulthood.
As we age, things often don’t turn out as nicely as we planned. We may not climb up the career ladder as quickly as we wished. Or we do, only to find that prestige and a high income are not as satisfying as we expected them to be. At the same time, high expectations about the future adjust downwards. Midlife essentially becomes a time of double misery, made up of disappointments and evaporating aspirations. Paradoxically, those who objectively have the least reason to complain often suffer most.
As a whole, these findings tell a story in which the age U-shape in job satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations that are painfully felt in midlife, but beneficially abandoned and felt with less regret during old age. Importantly, in the German study, I found this pattern regardless of people’s socio-economic status, their gender, or whether they lived in East or West Germany, despite the cultural differences in the decade right after unification.
At the individual level, acknowledging mid-career dissatisfaction as a normal and temporary stage in your work life provides a light at the end of the tunnel when you feel like there’s no hope. Moreover, hearing that it’s OK to feel regret from unmet aspirations helps you break the vicious circle of disappointment about feeling discontent.
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