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A detailed review is presented of some of the major research on job satisfaction conducted in the past 40 years. The information is discussed in five major sections, each introduced by a series of related questions, under the following headings: national trends in job satisfaction, 1958-73; distribution of job satisfaction in the work force (by occupation, sex, education, and age); what Americans want from their jobs (national sample, white collar, blue collar, and women worker's preferences); the importance of job satisfaction (from the perspective of the employer, the employee, and society); and new approaches, strategies, and findings (goals to be achieved or ignored, necessary assumptions, matching workers and jobs, training, changing the job--hours, bases of compensation, supervision, and work performed, and evaluating the change). Four pages of references are included, together with appendixes covering: characteristics of national surveys cited; problems with single-question measures of overall job satisfaction; sampling errors at the 95 percent confidence level; percentage of "satisfied" workers 1958-73 by race, education, age, and sex; and mean job satisfaction in 1973 by selected demographic and occupational characteristics. (SA)