Nine out of ten journalists enjoy their jobs, Press Gazette survey finds

Nearly nine in ten journalists enjoy their job, according to a survey conducted by Press Gazette to mark its upcoming 50th birthday.

Some 715 journalists filled out an anonymous online questionnaire, a sample which represents more than one per cent of the 64,000 Britons estimated by the Labour Force Survey to work in journalism.

The survey results provide an overview of who Britain's journalists are, where they work and what their concerns are for the future of the industry. Press Gazette will be releasing further survey results over the coming weeks.

Press Gazette was launched as a weekly magazine on 23 November 1965.

Of the 715 people to answer the question “Do you enjoy your job?”, 611 (87.6 per cent) said yes and 86 said no.

Of those surveyed, 677 agreed to rate their place of work out of ten. Some 43.3 per cent of participants gave their workplace a seven or eight out of ten. At the top, 8.6 per cent rated their workplace as a ten and 3.5 per cent rated it as a one.

As part of the survey, Press Gazette also asked participants what concerns they have about their place of work. Common issues raised include commercial pressure on editorial, bullying, job security, workloads and poor pay. The survey also asked participants to list what they enjoyed about their jobs.

All those who filled in the survey were asked what sector of journalism they worked in, and to provide as much detail as possible – without risking their identification – on their place of work and their job title.

Participants were also asked how much they earn in their jobs. Eight (1.2 per cent) of those who chose to answer this question answered more than £100,000 per annum. More than one third earned between £25,000 and £40,000. The most common salary range was between £30,000 and £40,000 a year, with 134 respondents falling into this band.

In the coming weeks, Press Gazette will be running several more stories based on the findings of the survey, broken down by sector and places of work.

There are 64,000 people in the UK who call themselves journalists, according to the Government's Labour Force Survey.

And on 18 June this year, Press Gazette launched a survey to find out who they are, where they work, how much they earn, what they do, what concerns they have about their work and whether they enjoy their jobs.

Over three weeks, more than 700 people filled in the survey after it was promoted on the Press Gazette website, on Twitter and via email

The full survey is below.

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Topics in this article : Journalism survey 2015