// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
What’s the secret sauce for happy scientists at work? These eight countries offer some clues
Linda Nordling is a freelance journalist in Cape Town, South Africa.
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This article is the first in a series discussing the results of Nature’s 2026 science-job satisfaction survey. It’s the latest edition of such surveys, which started in 2010; the last two took place in 2018 and 2021. The 2026 survey, created in partnership with Thinks Insight & Strategy, a research consultancy in London, launched in May and was advertised on nature.com, in Springer Nature digital products and through e-mail campaigns. It had 3,882 self-selecting respondents across 133 countries with 31% describing themselves as female and 19% as belonging to a minority ethnic group in their country of work. The full survey data sets are available at go.nature.com/4b2drrc.
Scientists might grumble about shrinking grants, mounting paperwork and long hours, but most are happy at work. When Nature’s careers team surveyed almost 4,000 scientists in May and June, 61% reported feeling at least moderately satisfied with their jobs. Around 75% felt either optimistic or neutral about their job prospects, and 65% would recommend a research career to students.
Salary ranked low as a driver of satisfaction, coming seventh out of eight factors assessed. Doing meaningful and engaging work and having a good work–life balance, job security and sufficient research funding, for instance, were all viewed as more important than take-home pay. Late-career scientists, those with permanent positions and those earning more than the equivalent of US$50,000 a year are more satisfied than are other researchers. Men are more optimistic than women: 56% of men feel positive about their career outlook compared with 44% of women (see ‘Nature’s 2026 job satisfaction survey’).
Respondents working in industry were not significantly more satisfied than those in academia — a change since the last survey, in 2021 (see ‘Looking back at scientist satisfaction’). This is despite industry scientists earning 66%, on average, more than do academics, according to the 2026 survey. “This is very interesting and shows that satisfaction is about more than money,” says Henry Sauermann, a science-policy scholar at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. Academic scientists probably enjoy other benefits, he notes, such as greater research autonomy than their industry colleagues have and the ability to do interesting work.
A showcase of Nature’s salary and satisfaction surveys reveals how opinions have shifted over the past 16 years.
Researchers’ self-reported contentment with their chosen profession depends on more than just salaries.
Many scientists are content with their work, but uneasy about finances.
Financial woes are marring researchers’ enjoyment of their work.