Beyond Pay: Job Quality and Job Satisfaction Among Private-Sector Workers in Ecuador

Job quality extends beyond earnings to encompass employment stability, social protection, skill-development opportunities, and working-time conditions. This study examines how these employment characteristics are associated with global job satisfaction among private-sector employees in Ecuador. Using repeated cross-sectional microdata from the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment (ENEMDU), the principal analysis covers 27,150 workers observed in the December waves of 2017–2019, with 2020 treated as a temporal sensitivity extension. Survey-weighted ordered-logit models account for the complex sampling design. The proportional-odds restriction is formally assessed and complemented by a survey-adjusted partial proportional-odds specification, binary-logit models, alternative functional forms, subgroup analyses, and a Guayaquil domain analysis. Real earnings, permanent employment, and social-security coverage are positively associated with job satisfaction, whereas longer weekly working hours are negatively associated with it. Employer-provided training does not exhibit a uniform association across satisfaction thresholds, while tenure and establishment size show no robust independent associations. The central patterns remain broadly stable across alternative specifications, although the 2020 extension indicates modest joint temporal heterogeneity. The findings show that workers’ evaluations of their jobs are associated with several distinct employment attributes beyond pay in an underexplored Latin American setting.