What Is the Good Jobs Score?
The Good Jobs Score is a standardized measure of job quality that captures how employees experience their work across four dimensions: Leadership, Purpose, Growth, and Fairness. Unlike single-item satisfaction surveys or broad engagement indices, the Good Jobs Score isolates the specific factors that define whether a job is genuinely good, not just tolerable.
The concept emerged from a growing body of research linking job quality to business outcomes. Zeynep Ton's work at MIT Sloan established the "Good Jobs Strategy" framework, showing that companies investing in frontline workers outperform competitors. The Good Jobs Institute built diagnostic tools around that research. Then in 2023, Two Sigma Impact and PwC launched the Good Job Score Assessment Tool, validating a 12-question survey instrument across 5,800 workers at 60-plus companies. That validation study examined over 440 metrics before landing on the four-dimension model.
The score matters because it answers a question that most workforce metrics dance around: Is this company creating jobs that people want to keep? Turnover rate tells you people are leaving. Engagement scores tell you how people feel today. The Good Jobs Score tells you whether the structural conditions for a quality job actually exist.
It sits at the intersection of employee experience, organizational health, and financial performance. For PE-backed companies navigating workforce optimization, it provides a single number that portfolio operators and CHROs can track alongside EBITDA, revenue per employee, and voluntary turnover.
The Good Jobs Score Formula
Good Jobs Score = Weighted Average of (Leadership Score, Purpose Score, Growth Score, Fairness Score)
Each dimension score comes from a set of survey questions scored on a 1-5 Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The weighted average produces a composite score on the same 1-5 scale.
Here is how to calculate it:
Step 1: Collect dimension scores. Administer the survey instrument (typically 12 questions, three per dimension). Average respondent scores within each dimension to produce four dimension-level scores.
Step 2: Apply dimension weights. Assign weights to each dimension based on their validated contribution to overall job quality. Research shows Growth carries the highest weight, followed by Fairness, then Leadership and Purpose. A common starting framework:
- Growth Score: 30%
- Fairness Score: 25%
- Leadership Score: 25%
- Purpose Score: 20%
Step 3: Calculate the weighted average.
Good Jobs Score = (w1 x Leadership Score) + (w2 x Purpose Score) + (w3 x Growth Score) + (w4 x Fairness Score)
Where w1 + w2 + w3 + w4 = 1.0
Step 4: Interpret the result. A score of 5.0 means every respondent rated the company positively on all factors. A score of 1.0 means the opposite. Most organizations land between 2.5 and 4.2.
A note on weighting: The Two Sigma/PwC validation study uses modeled weights derived from factor analysis rather than fixed percentages. If your organization runs the official assessment, those weights are calculated for you. The framework above provides a practical starting point for organizations building their own composite.
Worked Example
Cedar Ridge Health Partners is a PE-backed regional healthcare system with 1,400 employees across 12 clinics and two urgent care centers in the Southeast. After a 2024 acquisition of three independent clinics, the CHRO wants to understand job quality across both legacy and acquired locations.
They survey all employees using a 12-question instrument (three questions per dimension) on a 1-5 scale. Here are the average dimension scores:
- Leadership Score: 3.6
- Purpose Score: 4.1
- Growth Score: 2.9
- Fairness Score: 3.3
Applying the formula:
Good Jobs Score = (0.25 x 3.6) + (0.20 x 4.1) + (0.30 x 2.9) + (0.25 x 3.3)
Good Jobs Score = 0.90 + 0.82 + 0.87 + 0.825
Good Jobs Score = 3.42
On its own, 3.42 sits slightly below the midpoint of the "good" range. But the real value comes from segmenting.
Legacy clinics (900 employees): Good Jobs Score = 3.71. Growth Score is the weak spot at 3.2, but Leadership and Fairness both exceed 3.8.
Acquired clinics (500 employees): Good Jobs Score = 2.89. Growth Score drops to 2.4 (employees see no career pathway), and Fairness Score falls to 2.7 (pay equity concerns post-acquisition).
This 0.82-point gap between legacy and acquired locations pinpoints exactly where integration is failing. The CHRO now knows that Growth and Fairness in the acquired clinics need immediate attention: career pathing programs and a compensation equity audit. The composite score gave the signal. The dimension scores gave the diagnosis.
What Data Do You Need to Calculate the Good Jobs Score?
Survey responses across four dimensions. Each dimension requires at least three validated questions scored on a consistent scale (1-5 recommended). The standard instrument uses 12 questions total.
Leadership dimension data points:
- Employee perception of senior leadership communication during change
- Whether leaders seek and respond to employee feedback
- Whether leaders demonstrate sincere interest in employee well-being
Purpose dimension data points:
- Clarity of company mission and values
- Understanding of how individual roles connect to organizational objectives
- Alignment between stated values and lived experience
Growth dimension data points:
- Access to learning opportunities and skill development
- Availability of career advancement and internal mobility
- Quality of feedback and coaching from managers
Fairness dimension data points:
- Perception of fair compensation relative to role and market
- Physical and psychological safety in the workplace
- Sufficient flexibility for work-life balance
Data quality considerations:
- Minimum sample size of 30 respondents per organizational unit for statistically meaningful scores
- Anonymity is essential. Identifiable surveys suppress honest responses, especially on Leadership and Fairness
- Acquired entities, seasonal workers, and contractors should be flagged and analyzed separately
- Survey fatigue distorts results. Keep the instrument short (3-5 minutes) and time it away from performance review cycles
Why HR Leaders Need to Track the Good Jobs Score
It predicts financial performance, not just sentiment
Research across 186 Russell 1000 companies found that top-quintile Good Jobs Score companies post EBITDA margins roughly 1.8 times higher than bottom-quintile peers. Operating cash flow margins show the same pattern. This is not correlation buried in noise. Job quality is a leading indicator of the operational discipline that drives margin.
It gives PE operators a workforce quality metric they can track
Portfolio companies need metrics that connect to value creation. The Good Jobs Score translates workforce health into a single number that sits alongside financial KPIs in board decks and operating reviews. When a PE firm acquires a company, running a baseline Good Jobs Score within 90 days establishes whether job quality is a value creation lever or a hidden liability.
It identifies which dimension of job quality is broken
A low engagement score tells you people are disengaged. A low Good Jobs Score dimension tells you why. Is it Leadership failing to communicate? Growth pathways that do not exist? Fairness gaps in compensation? The composite score flags the problem. The dimension scores direct the investment.
It connects directly to turnover risk
Growth Score is the strongest predictor of voluntary turnover within the Good Jobs framework. Employees who score their growth opportunities below 3.0 leave at significantly higher rates. Tracking the Good Jobs Score lets you intervene on turnover before it shows up in your attrition data.
It enables apples-to-apples comparison across business units
Comparing engagement across a corporate office, a manufacturing floor, and a retail operation is messy. The Good Jobs Score's standardized four-dimension structure controls for role-type variance and produces comparable scores across wildly different work environments. This matters for multi-site operators, franchise groups, and post-acquisition integration.
It quantifies the ROI of people investments
When you invest in manager training, you expect the Leadership Score to move. When you build career ladders, the Growth Score should respond. The Good Jobs Score gives you a measurement framework that connects specific programs to specific outcomes, then rolls them up into a single number for executive reporting.
Benchmarks and Interpretation
General reference ranges (1-5 scale):
- 4.0 and above: Strong. Job quality is a competitive advantage. Focus on maintaining and extending.
- 3.5 to 3.9: Solid. Foundation is in place but one or two dimensions likely need targeted investment.
- 3.0 to 3.4: Average. Job quality is not actively driving attrition but is not a differentiator either.
- Below 3.0: Concerning. Structural job quality issues exist. Expect elevated turnover and difficulty attracting talent.
By industry context:
Technology companies tend to score higher, particularly on Leadership and Growth, reflecting flatter structures and stronger L&D investment. Consumer-facing and frontline-heavy industries (retail, hospitality, healthcare) tend to score lower, especially on Fairness and Growth, where pay compression and limited career pathways are structural challenges.
By company size:
Mid-market companies (500-2,000 employees) often show more score variance across business units than either small or large enterprises. This is because they are large enough to have operational complexity but not yet standardized enough to enforce consistent employee experience.
The most important benchmark is your own trajectory. A company improving from 2.8 to 3.3 over 12 months is making meaningful progress, even if 3.3 looks average against external benchmarks. Internal trends reveal whether investments are working. External benchmarks reveal where you stand relative to talent competitors.
Common Mistakes
Averaging all four dimensions equally without considering validated weights. Growth and Fairness carry more predictive power than Purpose in most validated models. Equal weighting dilutes the signal from the dimensions that matter most for outcomes like retention and financial performance.
Surveying too infrequently to detect trends. Annual surveys produce stale data. Quarterly or semi-annual pulses on the 12-question instrument capture the trajectory of each dimension and let you course-correct before problems compound.
Reporting only the composite score without dimension breakdowns. The composite tells you whether you have a job quality problem. The dimensions tell you what the problem is. Presenting only the composite to leadership removes the diagnostic power that makes the metric actionable.
Ignoring sample size requirements at the business unit level. A Good Jobs Score for a 15-person department is not statistically reliable. Set minimum thresholds (30 or more respondents per unit) and aggregate smaller groups into meaningful clusters.
Confusing the Good Jobs Score with the Good Jobs Institute Scorecard. These are different frameworks from different organizations. The Good Jobs Score (Two Sigma/PwC) is a four-dimension, 12-question survey instrument. The Good Jobs Institute Scorecard (Zeynep Ton/MIT) evaluates nine elements of job quality and includes operational metrics. Mixing them creates measurement confusion.
Treating the score as an engagement metric. The Good Jobs Score measures structural job quality, not day-to-day engagement or mood. A high Good Jobs Score with low engagement suggests the job structure is sound but management execution is failing. A low Good Jobs Score with high engagement suggests people like their coworkers but the job itself has structural problems. These are different diagnoses requiring different interventions.
Failing to segment by acquired vs. legacy populations. Post-acquisition, blending scores across legacy and acquired employees masks the integration gaps that will drive turnover. Always segment.
Related Metrics
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): Measures employee willingness to recommend the organization. The Good Jobs Score explains the "why" behind eNPS movement. A rising Good Jobs Score with a flat eNPS suggests structural improvements have not yet reached the employee's felt experience.
Employee Turnover Rate: The Good Jobs Score is a leading indicator of turnover. Declining dimension scores, particularly Growth and Fairness, typically precede turnover spikes by one to two quarters.
Revenue Per Employee: Top-quintile Good Jobs Score companies show stronger revenue per employee, reflecting the productivity gains that come from higher job quality and lower replacement costs.
Span of Control: Narrow spans of control often correlate with higher Leadership and Growth scores because managers have more capacity for coaching and development conversations.
Retention Rate: The inverse relationship to turnover, but segmenting retention rate by Good Jobs Score quintile reveals which employee segments are staying because they want to versus because they have no alternative.
Stability Index: Measures the percentage of employees with tenure over one year. High stability paired with a low Good Jobs Score signals a stagnant workforce: people are staying but not thriving.
Cost of Turnover: Quantifies the financial impact of the attrition that a low Good Jobs Score predicts. Connecting the two metrics lets you build the business case for job quality investments.