Take This Job
Why do so many Americans throw so much into their work? One surprising reason, writes sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, a Wilson Center Senior Scholar, in The Public Interest (Winter 1990), is that they like their jobs.
Beliefs about the work ethic vary over time and place. There is, however, a general inclination for older people to believe that things were better--or at least more moral, more decent--when they were young. As Adriano Tilgher, a historian of work, wrote in 1931, "Every country resounds to the lament that the workforce does not burn in the younger generation, the postwar generation."
The affluent generally complain that their subordinates, the less privileged, do not work hard and have lost the work ethic. A survey of members of the American Management Association found that 79 percent agreed that "the nation's productivity is suffering because the traditional American work ethic has eroded." But this is an old story. Harold Wilensky notes that in 1495 the English Parliament passed a statute on working hours and justified it in the following preamble: "Diverse artificers and labourers . . . waste much part of the day . . . in late coming unto their work, early departing therefrom, long sitting at breakfast, at their dinner and noon meal, and long time of sleep in afternoon."
The idea that people should work hard--because doing so is virtuous, because it advances the common good, or even because it lets them accumulate wealth--is, in historical terms, a relatively recent one. Since work is difficult, the question is not why people goof off, but rather why--in the absence of compulsion--they work hard. . . .
While I have few doubts that the work ethic is less prominent now than it was in the 19th century, the available facts do not justify bad-mouthing it. As the March 1989 issue of Psychology Today notes, in the 1950s a number of sociologists predicted that Americans would increasingly choose to emphasize leisure and to abandon work--and were proven entirely wrong. To quote George Harris and Robert Trotter: "Work has become our intoxicant and Americans are working harder than ever before. In the past 15 years, the typical adult's leisure time has shrunk by 40 percent--down from 26.6 to 16.6 hours a week. And the work week, after decades of getting shorter, is suddenly 15 percent longer." They note that "the average adult now pumps 46.8 hours per week into school, work, and com-muting--way above the 40.6 hours logged in 1973." It is true that people worked 53 hours per week in 1900, whereas they now average around 39, but this number has remained fairly constant since 1945.
One reason that more Americans have not substituted leisure for work may be that most of us like our jobs. In a 1973 Roper survey, 85 percent of the respondents said that they were satisfied with their field of work, whereas only 14 percent were dissatisfied. The corresponding figures for 1980 and 1985 show virtually no change. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) reports almost identical results in response to the question: "How satisfied are you with the work you do?" The same average percentage was up a bit in 1988, when 87 percent gave this answer. NORC has also posed a tougher question: "If you were to get enough money to live as comfortably as you like for the rest of your life, would you continue to work or would you stop working?" On average, 70 percent of the respondents questioned during the 1972-1982 period claimed that they would continue to work; the figure for 19831987 rose to 74 percent, and in 1988 it jumped to 85 percent. Daniel Yankelovich reports similar results.
Almost all surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans—over 80 percent--are satisfied with their jobs. There has been no significant change in these figures over time. Many people, of course, do object to specific aspects of their jobs, complaining about boredom, pay, opportunity for advancement, the way that work is organized, and so forth.
Yankelovich reports that almost 90 percent of all American workers say that it is important to work hard; 78 percent indicate an inner need to do their very best. His research also suggests that the motives driving people to work have changed; the proportion saying that they work primarily or solely for money has declined, while the younger and better educated emphasize the expressive side of work. To summarize
Yankelovich, such workers increasingly believe that work, rather than leisure, can give them what they are looking for: an outlet for self-expression as well as material rewards.
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