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Physicians were among the most physically fit, a Gallup survey found.

Does this job make me look fat?

If you are a bus driver, the answer is probably yes. The news is also bad for manufacturing and production workers, as well as installation or repair workers, according to a survey for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.

Transportation workers have a 36-percent obesity rate, the highest rate among 14 occupation groups measured by Gallup based on interviews with more than 139,000 American workers from Jan. 2 to Sept. 10, 2012. For manufacturing and production workers, 30 percent are obese, followed by 28 percent of installation or repair workers and 26 percent of office workers.

On the lighter end of the scale, 14 percent of physicians were obese, followed by 20 percent of business owners and 21 percent of teachers.

The study found several factors for worker obesity, including exercising fewer than three days a week, not eating healthy, limited access to a safe place to exercise, a history of depression and skipping annual dentist visits.

The bad news for transit workers is no surprise to Ed Watt, who drove a bus in Brooklyn and Manhattan for 20 years and now serves as the Director of Health and Safety for the Transport Workers Union of America AFL-CIO. It’s a job that leads to higher rates of medical issues for a number of conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic obstructive lung disease, according to information from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“First the sedentary nature of the work, sitting much of the day with the inability to move around, even for bathroom breaks,” Watt said via email. “The second is the mobile nature of the job leaves poor food choices. So fast food rules.“

“The other factor is that these jobs are highly stressful,” he said. “The stress of the jobs results from high demand and low control over the work. Traffic, people and schedule are all big items that are beyond your control as a driver. As a result of the stress, many are inclined to mal-adaptive coping mechanism."

The good news, Watt said, is that part of his job is working to make it easier for the transportation workers to lose the top spot on the Gallup list.

Production workers, the game is on.

Share Your Stories: Have you cut back on medical expenses?

Ted S. Warren / AP file

The value of a mother's work has decreased since Jenna Kagan homeschooled her then 6-year-old son Hunter. Taking care of house and family would cost roughly $59,000 to have someone else do, a research group found using government data.

If moms earned wages for the work they do around the house and with the kids, they’d be getting a pay cut this year.

The take-home pay that a mother would earn for everything from cooking to handling the family finances would total at $59,862 if she were paid on the open market, according to Insure.com’s analysis of government data on hourly wages.

That’s down from $60,182 in 2012 and $61,436 in 2011, Insure.com’s annual Mother’s Day Index shows.

The drop is because typical wages for some domestic jobs have fallen, said Amy Danise, a spokeswoman for Insure.com.

The Mother’s Day Index tallies 14 jobs that moms might perform, including cooking, driving, cleaning and taking care of the kids, and then looks at Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for those tasks. Danise said the website compiled its list by brainstorming about typical mothers’ tasks, and coming up with a typical number of hours she might spend on them.

By Insure.com’s tally, a mom’s average work week would be significantly longer than 40 hours - although most moms would probably also agree that parenting requires far longer hours than your average desk job.

The total does not include the wages that moms earn for paid work they do outside the home. 

The Insure.com data is not meant to be a rigorous analysis of the value of domestic work.

“It’s more like a fun way of looking at serious topic,” Danise said.

But some economists have taken a more serious look at the value of housework. A report released last year by the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis found that adding “nonmarket household production” to the nation’s gross domestic product would have raised nominal GDP by 39 percent in 1965 and 26 percent in 2010.

That figure would include jobs such as cooking, cleaning and child care that both men and women do around the house.

The decline in the contribution to GDP is because the hours women spent on housework fell from 40 hours per week in 1965 to 26 hours per week in 2010, and more women entered the paid workforce. That more than offset the increase, from 14 hours in 1965 to 17 hours per week in 2010, that men spent on domestic tasks.

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 7:41 PM EDT

Today’s teenagers are more materialistic and less interested in working hard than the baby boomers were in their teens, according to a new study. But sorry, boomers, the researchers say it’s probably your fault for creating a culture that breeds narcissism and entitlement.

“You’re taught what’s important and how to act by your parents, the media and those around you,” said Jean Twenge, a co-author of the study and professor of psychology at San Diego State University. “It’s the cultural changes that are really bringing these changes.”

It’s not just millennials who are materialistic, according to the study published Wednesday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The money-hungriness actually peaked with Generation X and has declined somewhat since then.

Among high school seniors, the need for money was highest around the end of the 1980s. For a cultural reference point, think 1987’s “Wall Street,” which put the phrase “greed is good” into pop culture.

And while GenY is less money-focused than the Gen Xers (but more so than the boomers) they are also the least willing to work hard, according to the research.

In the “don’t want to work hard” category, high schoolers in the mid-1970s agreed 25 percent of the time; in the late-80s that climbed to 30 percent; and by the mid-2000s it was up to 39 percent.

While the teens are now more likely than boomers to want a vacation home, there is a “growing disconnect between their willingness to do the work to pay for these things,” said Twenge, who is also the author of “Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before.”

The study makes a case for the high schoolers’ attitudes being a product of the times they grew up in. (This is where the blame gets passed to the older generations.) Growing up, the teens' values are influenced by the dominant social ideologies, family structures, economic situations, media, political and business messages, the researchers argue.

The research analyzed by Twenge and psychology professor Tim Kasser has been collected in Monitoring the Future surveys with U.S. high school 12th graders every year since 1976. For this study, the researchers did not examine data past 2007, though data are collected annually.

The study defines baby boomers as those born roughly 1946 to 1964; Generation X as those born 1965 to 1981; and Gen Y (known as the Millennials) as those born 1982 to 1999.

Courtesy Nicolette Pizzitola

Career strategist and Compass Point Associates CEO Nicolette Pizzitola joined TODAY readers in a live online chat to help them move their jobs forward.

Stuck in a career rut?

Career strategist and Compass Point Associates CEO Nicolette Pizzitola joined TODAY readers in a live online chat to help them move their jobs forward.

Her advice is to get off the computer, stop sending out the 100's of resumes, and start connecting with other real people. If you can do that, and start well in advance of when you'll need it, you're golden. Nicolette reminded viewers to take time for their futures every day and in every interaction, because if you do, your spirit, and paycheck, will give you a big thanks.

TODAY: One of the things you seem to talk about a lot is the importance of authentic networking. Why is that so powerful and key to getting where you want to go with your career?

PIZZITOLA: Most people think networking is handing out business cards and looking for a job. In reality, authentic networking is built on relationships established before you need them.

TODAY: So it's kinda like, just be a human, and be authentically curious about people outside your silo?

PIZZITOLA: Exactly! People need to to know you and it's not all about work.

When he decided against going to a traditional high school, Warner Adams got teased. But now he's getting the last laugh.

“People always make fun of vocational schools, but now they're like, ‘Oh man, I wish I went there,’” said Adams, now a junior at Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School, where every recent graduate found a job upon graduating.

In Massachusetts, where the school is located, the average starting salary in manufacturing is about $45,000. “I can make as much money as someone going to college, coming straight out of high school, and I don't have to pay for college loans or anything like that,” Adams said.

Pathfinder is a beneficiary of a program called “Amp It Up,” a Massachusetts initiative to encourage students to explore careers in advanced manufacturing. Instead of offering dark and dusty shops full of woodworking or table saws, many vocational schools are now full of state-of-the art machines and computers that teach students code, programming and design skills.

That has made these schools wildly popular. “There is a waiting list for the shop right now for kids who want to get into it,” said Pathfinder’s principal, Mary Jane Rickson. “The machine shops are clamoring for people right now. They can’t expand because they don't have any highly skilled people.”

And experts predict demand will only increase. Over the next decade. Massachusetts expects to create 100,000 new advanced manufacturing jobs, the largest growth of any sector.  Many of those new jobs will be in biotechnology and involve creating medical components.

“The question is, how do we make sure the opportunity is there to get the skills level across the need in our economy,” said Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

He said the answer involves changing people’s perceptions about vocational schools. “College is right for many, but not for everybody,” Patrick said.

It certainly didn’t appeal to Michael Rhodes. “I knew from a very early age that I didn't want to do it,” said the 19-year-old employee of Marox Corporation, a contract manufacturer of precision-machined components he said. “It’s not for me."

Rhodes has purchased a new car and is now saving to buy his first home. But he warns that manufacturing work is not a simple task.

“It’s easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said.

More:

College-educated millennials seek work-life balance, study says

Advice for vets looking for work and employers who want to hire them

The job market is tight and that doesn’t make things any easier for the thousands of vets returning home and wanting to re-enter the civilian work force.

According to the Family Work Institute, vets who have served since 2001 and returned to civilian life have higher unemployment rates (men, 9.5 percent; women, 8.3 percent) than their civilian counterparts (men 8.1 percent; women, 7.7 percent).

In other words: Our youngest and most recent veterans are having a harder time finding jobs than the average civilian.

During a TODAY Money web chat on Thursday, Ken Matos, director of research at the Families and Work Institute, spoke with vets who need a job and with employers who want to hire them.

“Our conversations with employers and veteran job candidates have pointed to two big problems,” Matos explained. “First, many employers are just now building up the programs and processes to streamline the recruitment, retention, and development of veteran employees and their families. Second both civilian employers and military veterans can get tripped up by some basic communication issues around understanding the significance and relevance of military experiences to civilian workplaces.”

JT: How can we use military service as a selling point to get a job? Should I play it down or up in my resume?

Ken Matos: That's a common and important question. My answer is yes, you should mention your military service. However, how you present that information is important.

When describing your military experiences, you will want to translate your position titles and tasks into terms that employers can understand. Many military terms are daunting to civilian recruiters.

Some great free online tools for rewriting a military resume to match civilian job descriptions are available at sites like Mynextmove.org, vetsuccess.gov and military.com.  

Bobbie: I'd like to hire vets but I hear mixed things about how they do in civilian jobs. What do you think? And where do I start if I want to hire them?

Ken Matos: Some of the common areas where there can be friction is in recognizing that the military is a very different work culture than many civilian workplaces. It emphasizes teamwork and tight coordination.

Yet, a few open and supportive conversations can make a big difference in helping vets and their coworkers understand each other's perspective and smooth out those rougher interactions.

Sometimes it’s as simple as pointing out what their new priorities should be and giving them a chance to make that a reality.

Read the rest of the Q & A below:

David Lees / Getty Images

Millennials surveyed said they seek work-life balance and value feeling appreciated at work.

College-educated millennials have a slightly different set of expectations about the workplace, and employers need to make changes or risk losing the best new workers, according to a new study conducted by PwC, the University of Southern California and the London Business School.

Primary among their concerns is a better work-life balance.

Among millennials, 71 percent said work demands interfere with their personal lives. By contrast, 63 percent of their older colleagues made that complaint.    

“Every generation would like a better work/life balance and I think the millennials are helping us see that, and maybe pulling us along,” said Terri McClements, PwC’s U.S. Human Capital Leader.

PwC initiated the study after it noticed an increasing number of its new hires were jumping ship after a short time. Since two-thirds of its workforce was born in the millennial bracket, (1980 to 1995 for this study), the professional services firm realized it might have a problem.

Chief among the complaints was the long-accepted practice of working like a dog right out of college in the hopes that one day translates into making partner at the firm. Millennials aren't convinced such a sacrifice would be worth the potential payoff later, the survey found.

That does not mean they are a new slacker generation.

“That perception is not correct,” McClements said. “They are equally committed.”

What the millennials want at work is to be judged on their impact, have fun, have a flexible schedule and get rewards for a job well done. They want an emotional connection to their work and to be part of a team focused on a goal. And while they are a wired generation, they want face-to-face contact when it comes to personal topics.

“Their experience is different,” McClements said.

The survey, PwC’s NextGen: A global generational study, included responses from 44,000 PwC employees globally, with nearly a quarter of responses coming from millennials.

The nation’s corporations have been turning in record profits of late, and yet you wouldn't necessarily know it from how their employees are being rewarded.

A Life Inc. post this week looked at how many at-work perks are disappearing even as many are being asked to work longer and harder.

Many said it’s a recipe for unhappiness.

“20 years with this company. There used to be so many little, cheap perks that were real motivators. Now there's virtually nothing,” one reader wrote. “I'm happy to have a job - and a decent one - but it is hard to watch the salaries of senior executives double in those 20 years....and profits higher....and none of the lower rank-and-file employees able to reap any of the rewards.”

Many lamented that their employees seem to think it’s better to motivate by fear than to give a pat on the back for a job well done.

“Our company has the ‘Princess Bride’ motivation package - Goodnight, sleep tight. I'll most likely fire you in the morning,” one reader joked.

But others said they don’t need perks – they’d rather have a raise.

“Spare the pat on the back. Give me the money,” one wrote.

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The moms who graduate from the nation's best universities are also among the least likely college grads to be working full-time - or at all -  a new analysis of government data finds.

About 70 percent of married moms who attended top-tier universities such as Princeton and Harvard were employed in 2010, the analysis showed.

That compares to about 80 percent of married moms who attended the nation’s least competitive universities, said Joni Hersch, the law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University who prepared the data.

The married moms from the nation’s best universities also tended to take more time out of the workforce than those who attended the least competitive universities, and to work fewer hours if they did work at all, she said. About 45 percent of the married moms from the best universities were working full-time, compared with about 57 percent of the married moms from the least selective universities.

Hersch’s analysis looked at married women between ages 21 and 54 who also had children under age 18, and is based on the National Survey of College Graduates, which provides government data on around 77,000 college graduates.

 “Every dimension showed lower labor market activity,” Hersch said.

Hersch said she thinks the results are surprising in that women who attend the best universities in the country would seem to be the most coveted potential employees. That means that employers would presumably be more likely to accommodate their desire for work/life flexibility.

“The flexibility alone doesn’t explain it,” she said. “The elites are going to dominate the non-elites in terms of flexibility.”

She thinks it’s possible that the married moms who attended the most prestigious universities are more likely to work part-time, or not at all, in part because they can afford to do so.

That’s because other research has shown that graduates from top schools are more likely to come from wealthy families and to marry men who also attend prestigious universities and come from similarly wealthy families. That could give them more financial flexibility to opt out.

Related: Class of 2013 grads, we want to hear from you

Still, she said there appears to be more to the decision than that.

“It’s not all explained by the husband’s income,” she said.

The tendency for these highly educated moms to work part-time or not at all even extended to many who had also earned advanced business degrees. But the weak economy seems to have played a role in sending some of these moms back into the workforce.

Hersch found that just about 35 percent of the married moms with MBAs who went to the best universities were working full-time in 2003, but that had increased to 54 percent by 2010.

By contrast, about 66 percent of the moms with MBAs who attended the least selective universities were working full-time in 2003, but that fell to about 48 percent in 2010.

She said that implies that in a strong economy, married moms who graduated from the best universities can hold out for the job they want. And in a weak economy, they can likely beat out the women from less selective universities to land a job if they want it.

Other researchers also have found evidence that moms with MBAs who attended prestigious universities tend to be more likely to “opt out” than their peers who get other advanced degrees, such as medical doctors and lawyers.

Catherine Wolfram, an associate professor at the University of California’s Haas School of Business who has studied this issue, said one problem may be that women who earn MBAs tend to be most qualified to work in business and finance. Unlike other fields such as medicine, she said it could be that women in business and finance find that there is little flexibility for going part-time or making other family accommodations.

“The work environment really matters,” she said.

Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard who also has studied these issues extensively, said it’s always been true that many women will slow their careers when they have children. But she questioned whether that should be considered a problem when women have long lives to pursue both professional and personal goals.

“There isn’t any change in opting out. Professional women, women who have advanced degrees - even women with BAs and nothing else - are having their kids a lot later,” she said. “So, seeing women slow down a bit in their 30s may have been a surprise to some, but it’s not a surprise to anyone on the ground.”

High school and college graduates are still being hobbled by years of weak economic growth and an extremely tight job market, and that difficult start in the job market could impact the class of 2013 for years to come, a new analysis finds.

“Graduating in a bad economy has long-lasting economic consequences,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist with the Economic Policy Institute, which prepared the report on young workers released Wednesday.

The liberal-leaning think tank looked at high school graduates between ages 17 and 20 who aren’t enrolled in further schooling, as well as college graduates between ages 21 and 24 who have a bachelor’s degree and aren’t seeking further education.

The analysis found that the unemployment rate for the high school grads who aren’t going to college has improved somewhat since hitting a high of 32.7 percent in 2010, but not enough to give young workers (and their parents) much comfort.

An average of 29.9 percent of high school grads between ages 17 and 20 who weren’t enrolled in further schooling were unemployed and actively looking for work between March 2012 and February of 2013, according to their analysis. That’s up from an average of 17.5 percent in 2007, when the job market was much stronger because the recession had not yet begun.

Getting a college degree still greatly improves people’s job prospects, but many young college graduates also continue to struggle to find a job after many years of high unemployment and dim job prospects.

The unemployment rate for young, recent college graduates who weren’t furthering their education stood at an average of 8.8 percent between March of 2012 and February of 2013, according to the EPI analysis. That’s down from an average of 10.4 percent in 2010, but still much higher than 5.7 percent in 2007.

The EPI report noted that more than half of young high school graduates were enrolled in a college or university, following a long-term trend toward more young Americans heading to college. Still, many are finding it difficult to finance the increasing cost of education, and the weak job market could make it hard for those young people to pay off their student loan debt.

That's especially true if they can’t land a well-paying job. The EPI analysis found that young high school grads were making an average of $9.48 an hour in 2012, while young college grads were earning an average of $16.60 an hour.

Both groups have seen wages fall in the past decade as the economy has weakened, according to EPI’s analysis. That could turn out to be a big problem for young workers because when you start out your career at a lower wage, it can take years and years to catch up.

According to EPI’s analysis, the class of 2013 could be earning less than they might have in a stronger economy for as long as 10 or 15 years.

Shierholz noted that the unemployment rate for young workers is always higher than average, and that’s especially true in times of economic distress. Now, she said, young workers are in a particularly tough place mainly because the overall job market has been so tough for so long.

 “The unemployment rate of young workers is exactly what we would expect it to be just given the broader weakness in the labor market,” Shierholz said.

The overall unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But economists weren’t cheered by the drop because it came as many Americans stopped looking for work and therefore were no longer counted in the tally. The unemployment rate only includes people who have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.

Related:

It still pays to go to college, new data suggests

Is a pat on the back too much to ask?

Companies believe they’re doing a terrific job of motivating employees, but American workers don’t see it that way. After weathering the recession and being asked to do more with less, they’d like some kudos for their efforts.                                                             

“We found that employees with one foot out the door clearly feel recognition in their company is not frequent enough or fair enough,” Globoforce, a company that designs corporate rewards programs, said in its twice-yearly Mood Tracker survey last fall. About half of the employees who were looking for a new job said it was because they weren’t getting those “attaboys” for jobs well done.

When the economy was at its trough, employees didn’t mind giving up perks and working harder, because at least they still had jobs. But now things have changed: Corporations earned a record-high $1.75 trillion in the third quarter of 2012, and compensation for top executives has climbed even as wages for rank-and-file have stagnated.

A survey last fall of medium-sized and large companies conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and Globoforce, found that although about three-quarters of respondents had programs in place to recognize employee achievements, this number slipped from the previous year.

That’s still a healthy majority, but there’s evidence that the decrease might be a longer-term trend dating back to the start of the recession. Surveys conducted every three years by the group WorldatWork found that recognition peaked in 2005 and 2008, when 89 percent of responding companies had recognition programs. In the group’s 2011 survey, that number slipped to 86 percent, and the amount they spent on these programs also dropped.

“There is an impact when things are taken away, particularly in this day and age when there are minimal increases in salary,” said Rodger Stotz, chief research officer with the Incentive Research Foundation. “The recognition becomes more valuable because it shows the organization values and appreciates the employee, and it has an emotional impact.”

Efforts to recognize good work and boost morale don’t have to be expensive, recognition experts say.

“My experience has been these programs don’t cost a lot of money, but there’s a lot of bang for the buck,” said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management.

“It creates a culture of positivity,” Charlie Ungashick, CMO at Globoforce, said.

The problem is that the financial benefits of more motivated workers aren’t always evident. Much of the research conducted to assess results is attitudinal rather than quantitative, and the losses the come from dropping recognition efforts are similarly hard to quantify, said Frank Mulhern, associate dean of integrated marketing communications program at Medill School of Journalism Media and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. “It’s hard for a CFO to see that.”

A little more than three-fifths of respondents in the SHRM survey said their company rewarded employees based on performance, but the people doing that hard work don’t see it that way. Just 37 percent of respondents in Globoforce’s Mood Tracker survey said people in their company were fairly rewarded according to their job performance.

More than half of workers say being “valued and rewarded” is what’s most important in choosing where to work, employee recognition program company Achievers found in a survey conducted last year, but a November Gallup poll found that slightly less than half of American workers are satisfied with the amount of recognition they get for the work they do.

Ungashick said companies were experimenting with new ways to give workers that pat on the back, like peer-to-peer recognition. And a growing number of managers are embracing benefits like flex time and working from home. But these “perks” are a double-edged sword: A Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that up to two-thirds of the time employees spend telecommuting is actually on top of the regular 40 hours they put in every week.

Industries with labor shortages see the most feel-good investment. Elliott says Silicon Valley, where big tech firms fight for top talent in programming and engineering, is a hotbed of incentives and little extras. After becoming CEO at Yahoo last July, Marissa Mayer implemented free lunch and gave employees iPods. (She also demanded that employees work from the office.)

But this sort of lavish perk isn’t the norm in most workplaces. “This emphasis on engagement, much of that is being pioneered in the high tech industries where there’s such a high value placed on human capital,” Mulhern said.

It’s another story at the lower end of the labor-market spectrum, where many of the jobs lost in the recession have been recovered, he said. “It’s more like the cost benefit isn’t necessarily there... for employees where there’s a high turnover and they’re easily replaceable.”

Psst, bosses: Take a good look around your office. There’s a good chance at least some of your workers are counting the days until they can take this job and shove it.

A Life Inc. post this week looking at how workers might bolt if the job market gets stronger prompted many workers to confess that they are coming to work with an eye to the door.

About 23 percent of the more than 12,000 readers who took our survey admitted that they hate their jobs. Another 60 percent said they’d be open to a better job if one came along.

The dour outlook comes after years of a tight job market that has left many employees working hard for the same – or less – pay and benefits.

 “They squeeze you like getting blood out of a turnip. Work you to death and generally treat you with disrespect. Bring it on!” one reader complained.

Others lamented that their work environment has left them demoralized, frustrated or angry.

“It's hard to stay energized while watching management all but suck the life out of an organization,” one reader lamented.

Many said they just don’t feel valued.

 “If management didn't treat us as though we are a dime a dozen, I wouldn't be looking,” one reader said.

Only about 12 percent of our readers said they love their jobs. Many of those workers said they were grateful to have a good employer.

“I was laid off for 10 months when things were bad, but was asked back when they improved. My boss has always paid and treated me well,” one reader said.

For those workers who are unhappy, it could still take a long time to find new work.

The jobless report released Friday showed a severe slowdown in the number of jobs being created. That means many people who want a new job may find that there isn’t a good one out there – yet.