Early childhood educators’ (ECEs) well-being has attracted worldwide attention given its importance to many individual, organizational, and child outcomes. ECEs’ well-being is a multidimensional construct that encompasses a number of elements. These elements are interrelated and represent a complex psychological network. Scant research has examined the features of this network and whether the network would be upheld for ECEs across career stages. This study uses a network analysis to identify pervasive and robust features of well-being in ECEs from diverse career developmental phases. Participants were 1,188 ECEs (1,008 females, M age = 32.19 years) recruited from four cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. They reported mental (i.e., subjective well-being and psychological well-being), occupational (i.e., job stress, job satisfaction, job burnout, and work engagement), and physical (i.e., physical health and role functioning of health) well-being. The results showed that emotional exhaustion was the most central element in the network whilst some other eudaimonic elements from the occupational aspect (e.g., vigor, dedication, and depersonalization) also occupied relatively important places. Further invariance analyses suggested that the above network was largely equivalent across ECEs at the novice, advanced beginner, and competent career stages. Theoretically, this study informs which elements are playing the fundamental role in the holistic well-being network among Chinese ECEs. Practically, the findings also provide implications for prevention and intervention strategies and career counselling to enhance Chinese ECEs’ different aspects of well-being. Copyright © 2023 The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V.

The occupational well-being (OWB) of early childhood educators (ECEs) play a crucial role in their job performance, the development of a child, and the operation of early childhood education sectors. OWB of ECEs has been an increasing concern in recent years and this concern might be particularly salient for beginning ECEs given the multiple adaptive changes and challenges they encounter during the transition from training to teaching. However, research on the beginning ECEs’ OWB has been scarce. In this study, we employed both variable-centered and person-centered approaches to explore OWB and examined job demands and resources as predictors in 117 Hong Kong beginning ECEs (113 females, Mage = 21.71 years). They first reported job demands (i.e., class size, working hours, dealing with children with special education needs) and job resources (i.e., salary and job support) at the end of the first month of the fall semester upon working as in-service teachers. They then reported on four OWB variables (i.e., job satisfaction, work engagement, job stress, and job burnout) at the beginning of the spring semester. Results of the variable-centered analysis revealed that beginning ECEs reported medium or above-medium levels on the positive OWB indicators and medium or below-medium levels on the negative OWB indicators. Regression analysis found that despite some exceptions, job demands and job resources negatively (positively) and positively (negatively) predicted positive (negative) OWB indicators, respectively. Results of person-centered analysis suggested that the complex pattern of different OWB indicators could be categorized into two OWB profiles (medium well-being vs. relatively weak well-being – emotional exhaustion). Results of regression analysis showed that beginning ECEs with higher job demands were less likely, whereas those with more job resources were more likely, to be assigned to the medium well-being profile. These results inform which leverage points could