For the second year in a row, Hawaii has the happiest workforce in America, according to career matching platform Sokanu, which has released an infogographic on the results of their annual survey about job satisfaction.

States of happiness

Their poll of 150,000 people across 599 career paths revealed that where in the country you live is as important a factor as the type of work you do.

Lest the Hawaii finding lead you to think that happiness depends upon living and working in a tropical paradise, the second place was snagged by Alaska (up 6 places from last year’s survey) and the third by Wyoming (up 3 places from last year’s survey).

New Mexico climbed 42 places to earn itself the 4th spot, with West Virginia falling 3 spaces to 5th place.

Unhappy workers

It seems that the East Coast is where the country’s unhappiest workforce resides with 4 out of 5 of the least satisfied states being from New England. Oregon made a debut in the bottom 5 falling 20 places to the 46th spot, with Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts following in 47th, 48th and 49th place respectively. Washington D.C was labelled the least satisfied state, falling 12 places to the bottom spot.

Creativity was a big factor in job satisfaction — video game producer, film director, music producer and comedian were labelled as the happiest jobs in the country, along with neurosurgeon.

Service-based location-dependent jobs such as telemarketer, store clerk, cashier, janitor and machine feeder were rated as the nation’s unhappiest jobs, signalling that passion-based creative jobs offer more job satisfaction than service-based jobs.

Spencer Thompson, CEO of Sokanu, said: “The results from this year’s survey show a dramatic shift to passion-based careers where one has control over their work and a license to use their creativity in a way that allows them to make a living from their interests. The unhappiest jobs are those in the service industry where there is a lack of autonomy or variety in the work.”

For more information and to view the full infographic, click here.