Glassdoor Job Ranking: Which Ones Offer Great Work-Life Balance

November 4, 2015 by Julie Verhage

The eight-hour day probably seems like a thing of the distant past—that is, unless you have one of the jobs below.

GLASSDOOF WORK LIFE BALANCE

According to a new survey from career website Glassdoor, while work-life balance has continued to decrease over the past six years, there are still areas where employees are happy with the amount of time they spend on the clock.

Related article: Want Your Work and Life in Balance? Take a Long-Term View, Exec Coach Says
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be tough in today’s work environment, but some jobs allow for more flexibility than others. In fact, work-life balance has decreased in recent years, as employees have reported an average work-life balance satisfaction rating of 3.5 in 2009, 3.4 in 2012, and 3.2 thus far in 2015.

It’s not just one industry getting the perk, either. Jobs on the top-25 list range from data scientist, to substitute teacher, to marketing manager. To find positions where work-life balance consistently comes up as a plus, Glassdoor looked at its company reviews. Users who review a company can also rate several workplace attributes of their job, including work-life balance, on a scale of 1-5. To make Glassdoor’s list, a job title had to have been rated by at least 75 people with that position at two or more companies, and 15 percent of reviews for the job title had to cite work-life balance as a pro.

While these roles all rank high for the amount of time you can spend at the office, some of them don’t pay as well as others. Data scientists, who make nearly $115,000 annually, took the No. 1 spot in both work-life balance and salary. Meanwhile, lab assistants and substitute teachers were paid less than one- fourth of that: $27,550 and $24,380, respectively.

CM Editor’s Note: While Bloomberg discloses “claim examiner” as one of the jobs with poor work-life balance, a job title that could also be used at some insurance companies did make the top ranks. A position titled “risk analyst” came in at No. 11 spot with at 3.8 work-life balance rating and a salary of roughly $69,000.

The list above is a portion of the top-25 list, which is available here.

Although Glassdoor didn’t want to give a list of jobs with the worst work-life balance, it did provide four roles that fall below the average work-life balance rating of 3.2: social worker, claims examiner, mental health therapist and reporter. The ratings for these jobs ranged from 2.7 to 3.0, and they had salaries that were unlikely to make up for the poor hours.