Conversation Starter: Red and blue jobs ahead of the 2024 election

As the 2024 election nears, economic sentiment remains an important consideration for American voters. While inflation has been a hot topic over the last few years, how Americans feel about their jobs is just as important to understanding how Americans feel about the economy overall.

Based on FEC data, we identify the political lean of jobs, separating them into red, blue and purple jobs based on their political donation patterns. Based on Glassdoor’s data in 2024, workers in red jobs rate their overall job satisfaction at 3.46 out of 5, while blue jobs are 3.59 out of 5. However, purple jobs are actually most satisfied at 3.61 out of 5.

These differences might be due to the types of jobs that lean red or blue. For example, two of the most common red jobs in our dataset are warehouse workers (3.27) and drivers (3.26) which tend to have lower job satisfaction while blue jobs like software engineer (3.82) and product manager (3.63) tend to have higher job satisfaction. Purple jobs like administrative assistant (3.54), marketing coordinator (3.66) and sales manager (3.68) also tend to be higher rated as well.

The chart above however does show that all three groups have seen their job satisfaction fall in the last 4 years. All three have seen their job satisfaction decline 3% from 2020 to 2024 without any major difference between the groups. Ultimately, this data suggests that while Americans in purple jobs have higher job satisfaction than either their red or blue peers, job satisfaction is likely lower in 2024 than in 2020 for American voters.

Methodology

This analysis classifies jobs as blue, red or purple based on the occupations in FEC individual contributions from 1 January 2023 to 8 August 2024. Occupations reported in FEC individual contribution data are grouped into Glassdoor occupational categories. The share of donations by an occupation for Democrats, Republicans or independents is calculated and an occupation is defined as “red” if there is more than a 5 percentage point larger share of donations to Republicans than Democrats or independents, “blue” if there is more than a 5 percentage point larger share of donations to Democrats than Republicans or independents and “purple” in all other instances.

Ratings are from Glassdoor reviews by U.S. full-time or part-time employees submitted January 1, 2020 through October 2, 2024, grouped by the year of the job held.