There has been a growing interest in understanding how intangible job characteristics (autonomy, prestige, stress, etc ) affect job satisfaction.  We take part to this debate by analysing first whether the occupation held by the respondents impact on their level of happiness and second, the reasons underlying those cross-occupation variations. The data used in the paper are drawn from the 2006/2007 European Social Survey (ESS), a cross-country survey which was administered on a nationally representative sample of 25 countries.