Tell me why I don’t like Mondays: investigating day of the week effects on job satisfaction and psychological well-being

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between the day of the week on which a survey respondent is interviewed and their self-reported job satisfaction and mental health scores by using data from the British Household Panel Survey. Evidence presented here confirms that self-reported levels of job satisfaction and subjective levels of mental distress systematically vary according to the day of the week on which respondents are interviewed even when controlling for other observed and unobserved characteristics. However, we find that the main conclusions from previous studies of the determinants of job satisfaction and mental well-being are robust to the inclusion of day-of-interview controls.