Job satisfaction is sensitive to economic fluctuations; it rises during economic growth and falls in recessions. Job satisfaction also depends on relative comparisons. For workers less affected by business cycles-as is typical in the public sector-job satisfaction may thus be countercyclical due to comparisons with other sectors. Previous laboratory results confirm this countercyclical trend. This study reports new results from the German Socio-Economic Panel confirming the overall countercyclical job satisfaction trend but also revealing this trend is present only among men, not women. We consider three possible drivers of this gender gap. Competitiveness and pro-sociality differ between men and women both in the laboratory and in the field and plausibly interact with job satisfaction countercyclicality. Another potential explanation of countercyclicality is that men are more commonly the primary household providers. We conducted an experiment to explore these three channels. The experiment replicated the countercyclical job satisfaction trend. While identifying a significant gender gap in competitiveness, pro-sociality, and job satisfaction, we found no difference in job satisfaction cyclicality between men and women, nor a correlation with these traits. Our findings suggest that the fundamental gender differences we identified in the laboratory do not drive the gender differences observed in the survey data.

工作满意度对经济波动敏感；它在经济增长时上升，在经济衰退时下降。工作满意度还取决于相对比较。对于受商业周期影响较小的工人来说（这在公共部门是典型的情况），由于与其他部门进行比较，工作满意度可能是反周期的。之前的实验室结果证实了这种反周期趋势。这项研究报告了德国社会经济小组的新结果，证实了总体反周期工作满意度趋势，但也揭示了这种趋势仅存在于男性中，而不是女性中。我们考虑了这种性别差距的三个可能的驱动因素。在实验室和现场，男性和女性的竞争力和亲社会性有所不同，并且可能与工作满意度反周期相互作用。反周期性的另一个可能的解释是，男性更常见地是主要的家庭经济支柱。我们进行了一项实验来探索这三个渠道。该实验复制了反周期的工作满意度趋势。虽然我们发现在竞争力、亲社会性和工作满意度方面存在显着的性别差距，但我们发现男性和女性之间的工作满意度周期性没有差异，也没有发现与这些特征的相关性。我们的研究结果表明，我们在实验室中发现的基本性别差异并不会导致调查数据中观察到的性别差异。