Most American workers say their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world, a new YouGov survey finds.
Overall, 62% of U.S. adult citizens with full- or part-time jobs say their jobs are meaningful, including 61% of male workers and 63% of female workers. Only 20% of U.S. workers say their jobs don't make meaningful contributions to the world. (That's less than the 37% of British workers who said in 2015 that their jobs were meaningless, according to a YouGov survey at the time.)
Workers with more education are more likely to say their jobs make a meaningful contribution to the world, as are those from higher-income families.
While recent debate has centered on so-called "email jobs" that focus on sending emails or attending meetings rather than directly providing a product or service, American workers whose jobs don't involve email or meetings are less likely to say their jobs are meaningful (53%) than are those who say some (67%) or half or more (64%) of their jobs involve email or meetings.
One-third of U.S. adult workers say half or more of their jobs involve sending emails or attending meetings, while 42% say some of their job does and 24% say none of their job does.
Men (36%) are slightly more likely than women (31%) to say half or more of their job involves email and meetings. So are workers under 45 (40%) compared to workers 45 to 64 (28%). Workers with college degrees are much more likely than workers without degrees to have email-focused jobs (43% vs. 25%).
Overall, 43% of Americans say all (10%) or most (32%) U.S. jobs make a meaningful contribution to the world, while 25% say some or none do. 23% say about half of U.S. jobs are meaningful.
Women (46%) are slightly more likely than men (40%) to say that most or all U.S. jobs make a meaningful contribution to the world. Conservatives (47%) are more likely to say this than are moderates (40%) or liberals (39%).
But an even bigger factor associated with seeing many U.S. jobs as meaningless is how Americans view their own jobs — or whether they have one. Americans who view their own jobs as meaningless are much more likely to say that some or no U.S. jobs have meaning than are Americans who see their own jobs as meaningful (52% vs. 29%). And only 17% of Americans who don't work say that some or no U.S. jobs have meaning.
Americans as a whole are equally likely to say that most men's jobs (41%) and women's jobs (43%) make a meaningful contribution to the world. But not every group of Americans is evenly divided. Men are more likely to say most men's jobs are meaningful than women are, and the same is true about women and most women's jobs.
Liberals are more likely to say most women's jobs are meaningful (48%) than that most men's jobs are (37%), while conservatives are more likely to see most men's jobs as meaningful (50%) than to see most women's jobs that way (42%). Moderates are closely divided.
If U.S. workers lost their job, 21% say they'd find it very hard to find a new job that paid as much as they're earning now, while 39% say it would be somewhat hard and 31% say it would be easy.
Men (21%) and women (21%) are equally likely to say they'd find it very hard to replace their current job with one that pays as well. American workers who are 45 to 64 are twice as likely as workers who are 18 to 29 to say they would find it very hard to find a new job that pays as much as they earn (29% vs. 14%).
Workers who don't think their jobs are meaningful are twice as likely (37%) to say they'd have a hard time finding a replacement job with equivalent pay than those who do think their jobs are meaningful (18%). Workers whose jobs don't involve emails or meetings are more likely (43%) to say it wouldn't be very hard to replace their job with similar pay than those who spend some (25%) or half or more (29%) of their job on emails and meetings.
Overall, workers with family incomes above $70,000 per year are about as likely to say they'd have a hard time finding a replacement job with equivalent pay as workers with family incomes below $70,000 (21% vs. 19%). But one big exception concerns workers who don't think their jobs are meaningful.
Among workers who do see their jobs making meaningful contributions, workers with family incomes above $70,000 are more likely than lower-income workers to say they'd have a hard time replacing their job (20% vs. 13%). But among workers who see their jobs as meaningless, the share who say they'd have a hard time replacing their job is 29% of workers from $70,000+ families and 46% from families earning less than $70,000.
Among full-time workers, similar shares of men (82%) and women (86%) say that if they lost their job, they'd be likely to try to find a full-time job. Women are more likely than men to say they'd be likely to look for a part-time job (68% vs. 52%), while men are more likely than women to say they'd be likely to start a new business (30% vs. 21%).
Similar shares of men (16%) and women (13%) say that if they lost their job, they'd be likely to leave the workforce to care for a house or family.
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Methodology: The poll was conducted among 1,122 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of U.S. adult citizens. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (mapodile)
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