If one were to ignore all the militating factors and look only at how many people have a day job, one would conclude that having a day job was incredibly popular. There exists the possibility that some people play SMN under similar circumstances.

For any other (sub-)role except perhaps NIN, swapping job to something you'll enjoy more is doable. But the two casters competing with SMN are either so weak as to be unwanted (RDM) or so high-skill-required with an outsized impact on group strategy as to be unwanted (BLM).

So if you wanted to play a caster, if all your raid gear is caster gear and/or you're locked into your static's caster slot, and if your static/PFs don't want RDM or BLM, what job do you play?

This is not to invalidate the opinion of anyone who likes the current SMN design, rather to speculate on why SMN play numbers might be so high while job satisfaction polls so low.