When we were at primary school, my sister and I used to steal our mother's rollers and nail varnish and curl each other's hair and paint each other's fingernails. My brother, meanwhile, would spend hours with his Action Man commando, pulling the cord in its plastic back and listening to it croak: "Enemy tank approaching!" and "Give me some cover!"

Later, when we put away childish things, my sister and I became journalists and my brother a stockbroker. Yet I now find that if only we had stuck with our early career leanings, things might have worked out a lot better for all of us.

According to research published last week by City and Guilds, beauticians are the happiest workers in the UK, followed by hairdressers and soldiers in joint second place. A long way down the list of job satisfaction come journalists, while right at the bottom are bankers and other financial sector workers.

This is quite surprising. Most children have gone off the idea of hairdressing and the army by the time they enter double figures. There are lots of things about both jobs that are off-putting. Beauticians have to electrocute the unwanted hair on people's chins, spray them orange and give them bikini waxes, while hairdressing is repetitive, low status and gives you a bad back.

The armed forces seem to have even less to recommend them. You get wet, dirty and scared, eat horrible food and sleep in uncomfortable places. On a bad day you have to kill people; on an even worse one you get killed yourself. In all, not terribly attractive.

And it is not even as if you get paid decently in either line of business: hairdressers start on the minimum wage, and soldiers start on less than a quarter of what a young City banker might get.

So why is it that soldiers and beauticians are, relatively speaking, so happy? Is it because they are allowed to wallow in their gender stereotypes? Perhaps; though I suspect that is the least of it.

For hairdressers and beauticians, every day provides a rare opportunity to make a handful of people feel a lot better. Getting one's legs waxed or highlights done almost always lifts the spirits. My hairdresser sees himself not only as a craftsman but as a therapist. Our chats are of the most satisfying kind: unthreatening, intimate and impersonal all at the same time.

The feedback hairdressers get is almost always good. Even when they have made a hash of your hair and hold the mirror up so that you can see the back of your head, you don't say "Oh no! You've made me look like Maggie Thatcher!" you grit your teeth and say: "Lovely, many thanks."

In the army the job satisfaction takes a different form. There is not much in the way of customer feedback, but as Prince Harry said following his stint in Afghanistan: "Anyone who says they don't enjoy the army is mad. It's the best job you could ever, ever wish for. It's got so much to offer."

According to him it is not just that the other chaps are good eggs, it is that the time passes pretty quickly, especially when being shot at. "If things start happening the day goes quicker. People back home can't quite understand that," he said.

But I reckon I can understand it. Being under fire is what soldiers are trained for. Likewise cutting hair and waxing legs is what hairdressers and beauticians are trained for. This is the real nub, I think, of why both professions are so much happier than most other workers. The rest of us are dissatisfied because only a tiny amount of the day is spent actually doing what we are supposed to do. The rest is frittered away in meetings, sending pointless e-mails, and in aimless acts of office pettiness, leaving one grumpy and drained.

Both hairdressing and the army are unfashionably hierarchical, in the best possible way. While the army has its corporals, its captains, and brigadiers, most salons have a bewildering range of stylists, each with their own title and price bracket. The tiers mean that everybody knows exactly where they are. Moreover, both professions are arranged into small groups working closely together, which means there is much pleasant chatting and camaraderie. Orders from the boss are brief and clear, leaving almost no room for managerial claptrap.

By comparison, consider the plight of the banker. The experience of a happy customer is alien to him: in fact most of us firmly believe that our banks are ripping us off. Retail banking customers have to queue for ages and then talk through a bulletproof screen. In investment banks, corporate customers endlessly complain that they are paying over the odds for the services they get.

There is very little camaraderie either. In my job as agony aunt I get a stream of City people writing to say that their colleagues are sleazeballs, that the work is pointless and relentless. Indeed, really the only thing it has going for it is the pay cheque. And as The Beatles pointed out, money can't buy you love. Or rather, money doesn't make you tick "strongly agree" when someone comes around with a clipboard asking if you are happy at work.

And as if things were not bad enough, bankers are all now losing their jobs. That is the ultimate thing that hairdressers and soldiers have going for them - they are immune to the credit crunch. Whatever is happening to the public purse, girls still need their highlights done, and the country still needs to be defended.

lucy.kellaway@ft.com