Key Points

• This report is a compendium of survey data and analysis developed as part of a multiyear project looking at the social dimension of work and the economic, psychological, and emotional experience of American workers. Each of the three volumes are available online and combined here for ease of access.
• The first volume focuses on how the American workplace generates social capital. More than half of Americans have met a close friend at work or their spouse’s workplace, and workers who have close workplace friends are more likely to be satisfied with their employment and less likely to look for another job.
• In the second volume, authors examine what Americans expect from work, whether they are getting what they say they need, and what factors play into their workplace priorities—specifically, the relationship between financial considerations, such as pay and benefits, and noneconomic workplace needs like mentoring and connections to supervisors.
• The final volume analyzes participant interviews from an earlier quantitative survey of worker attitudes; these interviews targeted participants age 22–29 to better understand the priorities and concerns of younger workers. The report concludes that young workers seek not only economic rewards but also roles that are fulfilling and contribute to their communities, indicating a shift toward valuing both material and social aspects of work.

Executive Summary

In an era marked by a decline in social capital across American institutions, the workplace has become a crucial arena for fostering social connections. Through their careers, Americans not only satisfy their economic needs but also find personal fulfillment, build social networks, and seek—and often discover—a sense of meaning and purpose that family, community, and religion once filled. Because of the workplace’s increasingly dominant role in social development and expression, AEI sponsored “The Social Worker,” a three-volume survey-report series on worker attitudes that explores the interconnectedness between economic and noneconomic aspects of work and its role in meeting workers’ material and social-emotional needs.

This report is a compendium of survey data and analysis developed as part of a multiyear project looking at the social dimension of work and the economic, psychological, and emotional experience of American workers. Each of the reports is available online and combined here for ease of access.

Volume I addresses the social dimensions of the workplace at the individual level and its pivotal role in building connections and strengthening social capital. This exploration highlights how college-educated women increasingly drive, benefit from, and bear the consequences of the strong tilt toward social-emotional skills in the workplace. Women, in our telling, are the new careerists; they are the most likely to invest in their workplaces in sharp distinction to non-college-educated men, who engage the least—revealing how the cultural and political divisions between college-educated women and non-college-educated men play out in the workplace. This volume also discusses the barriers to healthy workplace socialization such as remote work, burnout, and imposter syndrome, which can undermine the benefits of social capital.

Volume II expands on the first volume’s findings, addressing workplace trends by industry and reviewing how workers think about financial issues—such as pay and benefits—along with nonfinancial matters such as workplace mentoring and development, job fit, flexibility, and the role of meaning and purpose at work. Education level is the most salient feature when it comes to individual levels of social integration and satisfaction at work, often heightening some of the gender and education divides identified in Volume I.

Volume III seeks to blend our quantitative survey findings with the “voices” of young American workers gleaned through qualitative interviews with survey participants. Our objective was to look beyond the numbers to how Americans understand and explain themselves on issues relating to education, jobs, careers, and economics. We found that the overarching emphasis workers place on job flexibility expresses itself in many different ways depending on workers’ needs and life circumstances. Interviewee responses show how education, job satisfaction, and economic-security issues work together in determining whether work is a positive, mission-oriented experience or a day-to-day struggle. The interviews also show that weak social supports outside of work—a shortage of friends, spouses, or families—tend to exacerbate economic worries.

These volumes collectively provide a nuanced understanding of the workplace’s evolving role in American life, emphasizing the importance of material and social aspects of work in fostering a dignified and connected society.