How important is having an interesting job?
As a sociologist who studies what people value about work, I have been tracking North Americans’ values about work for years.
One pattern stands out: people care less about having an interesting job today than they used to.
Two decades ago, 61 per cent of Canadians and 57 per cent of Americans said that having an interesting job was personally very important to them.
In 2025, just 39 per cent of Canadians and 37 per cent of Americans said the same — a fall of about 20 points for both groups.
The 2005 survey was an International Social Survey, while the 2025 survey I conducted in partnership with Angus Reid Group. There were some methodological differences between the two surveys, but nothing that would produce that kind of difference over time.
The overall pattern from the two surveys is clear: a marked downward drift in the importance workers attach to doing interesting work.
Source: 2005 – International Social Survey Programme Work Orientations Module;
2025 – Measuring Employment Sentiments and Social Inequality Study (Scott Schieman, PI)
What could be behind this trend? The surveys tell us that the shift is happening — but not why.
Drawing on related data and two decades of research on work values, I see a few plausible explanations for this change.
First, when people have money on their minds, a job’s “interest” factor becomes secondary. And to claim that money has been on people’s minds lately would be an understatement.
In multiple surveys between 2023 and 2025, for example, I have consistently found that roughly eight in 10 Canadian and American workers have rated their respective economies as either “poor” or “only fair.”
When people feel pessimistic about the wider economy, that typically reflects at least some aspect of their own personal experience. Since 2020, both Canadian and American workers have perceived a significantly worsening cost of living.
Another possible explanation is that, in an era of smartphones and endless digital novelty, the attention economy may have altered what counts as interesting.
Consider that 60 per cent of workers today say time drags on the job, compared to 40 per cent in 1977, according to a different survey I conducted in 2023. That change is not overtly explained by a decline in job quality, but it is consistent with a workforce that has been conditioned to expect more stimulation.
And, in turn, perhaps we have recalibrated our baseline in ways that few jobs can match. The more appropriate question might be: Have we become harder to interest?
A third possible explanation is that the job qualities that typically feed into what make jobs “interesting” — such as autonomy or variety — have themselves eroded. If true, people might downgrade the importance of “interesting” work or stop prioritizing it.
However, my data does not support that claim. In my own ongoing surveys, the qualities that workers typically cite as making their work interesting — including autonomy, variety and the chance to learn and create — have held steady or even improved by several percentage points.
Whatever the reasons, the deprioritization of “interesting” work is troubling. The things that make work interesting are also the things that make work distinctively human. When workers stop expecting those qualities or downgrade its value, something essential is quietly conceded.
In the coming weeks, I’ll explore what workers themselves say keeps a job interesting — and why it matters more than we think.
It would be interesting to see longer-term data on this trend. My knee-jerk response is that: the cost of living has skyrocketed and we entered an affordability crisis, so people give less thought to how interesting their job is compared to whether they can pay the bills.
I believe one thing that might be overlooked, especially with the younger generations coming in the workforce is that unlike some of the older generations they don’t live to work they work to live.
A lot of younger people I’ve talked to say they just care about a job that earns them enough money and they can do without a lot of workplace drama, that allows them to pursue what they love outside of work. Like family, travel, social activities, etc.
Work is no longer the social activity it once was and Life/work balance is much more important nowadays.
It’s not that young people don’t want interesting jobs. It’s just not as important to them nowadays.
I don’t believe it is as troubling as some people make it out to be.
I think we’re just looking at the trend through an older generations, eyes and perceptions.