Salary Is The Most Important Consideration When Choosing A Job

Sample essay

It is sometimes argued that salary should be the most important concern when one decides whether a job is worth pursuing. Although I concede that earning a decent salary is important to one’s well-being, there is no evidence to show that it is the most crucial factor.

On the one hand, I admit that people have to take into consideration how much they will be paid when they search for a job. There is indeed a strong correlation between the size of a person’s salary and their level of happiness. Nowadays, with the rising living standards and cost of living, people need to earn a reasonable amount of salary in order to meet their everyday expenses, such as food, transport, rent, clothing and the like. Without a decent income, one would find it hard to survive in the contemporary society. In addition, one’s salary is very often a determinant of one’s social standing. In other words, in the perspective of many people, a person’s success, to a large extent, depends upon the size of their salary.

However, I would argue that there are other factors that are equally essential to people’s sense of well-being, and that the argument that salary is the most important consideration when choosing a job is logically flawed, because such a claim cannot be backed up by evidence. For one thing, one’s working environment matters a lot to one’s psychological and physical wellbeing. Given the fact that most people work 9-to-5 jobs which require them to spend at least one-third of their day at their workplaces, it is crucial for them to have friendly and understanding co-workers and superiors. And for another, other factors such as the skills, knowledge and experience one acquires from the job may also play an important role in one’s overall sense of achievement, which is another form of happiness. This sense of achievement is often associated with optimism which is an enduring perception of well-being, compared with the temporary and brief satisfaction brought about by a sizable salary and the materialistic things that one can afford to buy with that salary.

In conclusion, while money matters a lot, there are other considerations that prove to be equally important. And so far there is no research which shows that a fat salary trumps all other factors in terms of the role they play in making one happy.