America's shortage of workers has many of those still in the grind carrying an extra load these days, but the degree of happiness employees feel at the end of the day can vary greatly depending on what they do – and even where they live.
That's according to the latest Shift Pulse Report from workforce platform Deputy, which asked workers across industries including health care, retail, and hospitality to provide feedback on how they felt about their shift from a sliding scale of "stressed" to "amazing."
The Realm Refillery zero waste grocery store in Portland, Oregon, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. Oregon has the happiest hourly workers in the country according to a new analysis. (Thomas Teal/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
After 431,000 responses, the analysis determined these are the states with the happiest workers in the U.S.:
1. Oregon
Oregon took the top spot with 75% of respondents saying they feel "amazing," the highest percentage of any other state.
2. North Carolina
A view of the Asheville, North Carolina skyline. (iStock / iStock)
The Tar Heel State ranked No. 2 in the survey, with 70% of workers in North Carolina saying they felt amazing at the end of their shift.
3. Virginia
Landing in third place was Virginia, where 66% of employees polled said they felt amazing at the end of the day.
4. Connecticut
Fall foliage along the Connecticut River in Hartford, Connecticut (iStock / iStock)
Connecticut rounded out the top four with 60% of workers on the front lines rating their sentiment as "amazing" at the end of a shift.
Which states have the unhappiest employees?
According to Deputy's findings, Connecticut also had a sharp divide in how workers felt at the end of the day. The Constitution State was also found to have the highest readings of stress among frontline workers, with 20% describing their sentiment as "stressed" and another 20% saying they felt frustration at the end of their shift.
The state with the second-highest level of unhappy workers was Indiana where 34% said they felt either stressed or frustrated, followed by Oklahoma, where 19% of workers said they were stressed, and 8% said they felt frustrated at their job.