THE DATA NERD

U of T sociology professor Scott Schieman has been dissecting attitudes toward work for more than two decades. His recent Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study includes data from 18,500 of the country’s workers. He shares his thoughts on overhyped buzzwords, workplaces as social hubs and why we don’t hate our jobs quite as much as we say we do.

“Work shouldn’t be all-consuming. A job is just a means to a paycheque.” What in your research supports these popular premises?

I feel like my head is going to explode every time I see a new buzzword take hold—I mean, come on, half of the workforce isn’t quiet quitting.

The data just doesn’t bear that out. But there has been an increase in the perception that a job is just a way of earning money. Forty to 50 per cent of workers feel this way. That’s a real trend—if a slightly exaggerated one.

Do people just love to complain about work? Yes. Work is a key anchor in everyday life, and it’s a scapegoat. We’re blaming it without acknowledging that it also provides valuable things, like social connections, that research shows are good for people’s sense of self, well-being and overall life satisfaction.

The flip side of that is, “If I didn’t have to work so much, I could join a sports team or see my family more often.” In my research, I’ve learned that people often have difficulty finding things to do in their downtime. The impulse is to blame work for that, because we are overextended and stressed out, but some people have also lost the capacity to make connections—and work provides those opportunities. To be clear, I’m not saying work is always a great thing. But we shouldn’t see it as the enemy of life or feel like we’re not living when we’re working.

How much of this dissatisfaction with work is generational? It’s a hot take to say younger people are lazy, and I don’t want to add fuel to it. We love to pit generations against each other.

What does all of this say about the future of work in Canada? We need to have a national conversation about the value of work beyond just money—while acknowledging that the financial aspect is important. People are clearly pessimistic about what’s happening on the work front, but I think there are perception glitches that are making us feel worse than we really should. Many jobs have elements that are awful, such as work overload, unfairly low pay and toxic cultures, but we need to look at how pervasive those qualities actually are.