Abstract Overall job satisfaction is likely to reflect the combination of partial satisfactions related to various features of one's job, such as pay, security, the work itself, working conditions, working hours, and the like. The level of overall job satisfaction emerges as the weighted outcome of the individual's job satisfaction with each of these facets. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent and importance of partial satisfactions in affecting and explaining overall job satisfaction. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) a two layer model is estimated which proposes that job satisfaction with different facets of jobs are interrelated and the individual's reported overall job satisfaction depends on the weight that the individual allocates to each of these facets. For each of the 10 countries examined, satisfaction with the type of the job is the main criterion by which workers evaluate their job for both the short and the long term.