Office workers.Ivan Pantic/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Scott Schieman is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto. Daniel Hill is a graduate student in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto.
Does anyone want to work anymore?
Since 2020, we’ve endured a stream of supposed work trends. “Quiet quitting” is among the most prominent. According to TikTok, it’s when you “quit the idea of going above and beyond.”
Gallup recently claimed that “‘quiet quitters’ make up at least 50 per cent of the U.S. workforce — probably more.” Canada is purportedly worse, with two thirds of workers quiet quitting.
Quiet quitting supposedly reflects a new age of anti-ambition, where “decentering” work is celebrated. As Simone Stolzoff proclaims in his recent book The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work, work-life balance needs a recalibration. “Go for good enough” is now inspirational advice. The message: Work less — and care less about it.
While the pendulum seems to have swung to the “life” side, some wonder if it has gone too far. Is work ethic fading?
To find out, we partnered with the research firm YouGov to conduct a survey of 5,000 Americans in November of 2023. We then partnered with research firm Angus Reid to replicate that same survey with 2,500 Canadians in May of 2024. We call our study the MESSI (Measuring Employment Sentiments and Social Inequality).
Directly measuring work ethic is challenging. As one indicator, we asked respondents: “How much effort do you put into your job beyond what is required?” If work ethic is waning, most people should answer “none.”
But that wasn’t the case — not even close. Even more striking is that the numbers are similar for American and Canadian full-time workers. In both surveys, roughly 52 per cent said “a lot,” 35 per cent said “some,” 10 per cent said “a little,” and a mere 3 per cent said “none.”
Has work ethic changed over time? To check, we excavated data from the classic 1977 Quality of Employment Survey and found Americans were similar to our 2023 MESSI. In 1977, 57 per cent said “a lot,” 36 per cent said “some,” 5 per cent said “a little” and 2 per cent said “none” when asked the same question. As much as things change about the organization and culture of work, the average worker’s willingness to go above and beyond has barely budged.
But how can we explain the disconnect between all the bad vibes and rhetoric about work these days and workers’ responses about their own work ethic? To find out, in both MESSI surveys we asked: “How much effort do you think the ‘average [American/Canadian] worker’ puts into their job beyond what is required?” In a surprise to likely no one, most people think they work harder than others.
While 52 per cent of American and Canadian workers say they personally put a lot of effort into their job beyond what is required, only 13 per cent of all workers believe that the average American or Canadian worker does the same.
So, to answer the question about if anyone wants to work anymore, the simple answer is yes. But there is a major disconnect between how hard we say we work and how hard we think others work.
We really got a sense of the bad vibes — how lousy it is “out there,” for everyone else — when we asked workers about work ethic. Here’s just a sampling of what people told us.
A caterer declared that people “in general these days hate their jobs and don’t want to work at all.” A janitor lamented: “Not many people want to work, and if they do, most of them complain about their work or other people they work with.” And a locksmith added: “Most people are just not interested in working more than they have to.”
“I feel attitudes have changed a lot,” a cook explained. “People used to work hard to get their jobs done and were happy with their paycheque. Now a lot of people don’t care, choose when they feel like working, and complain a lot.”
A CEO of a roofing company amplified the point: “In an era of rampant poor work ethic, chronic victimhood mentality and the worst combination of self-entitlement with intense envy of what is perceived that everyone else has, most people are unnecessarily miserable at their jobs.”
Despite what most Americans and Canadians think, most workers say they are still willing to go above and beyond. On balance, that’s a good thing. Working hard is anchoring for our sense of self and motivation.
A 67-year-old custodian told us: “Most people, if truthful, don’t work for the money; rather, people derive their satisfaction from the things that come from steady work — pride, personal responsibility, satisfaction and the ability to determine what they want to achieve or accomplish.”
The residual aftershocks of the pandemic and the so-called Great Resignation have sullied work’s reputation. We believe that a perception-reality check about the state of work ethic is needed to correct the prevalence inflation that sustains the pessimism.
Cutting into those bad vibes would be a small step toward repairing work’s damaged reputation.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.