Social stratification in meaningful work: Occupational class disparities in the United Kingdom.

ABSTRACT: Sociologists have long been interested in the meaning workers derive from their jobs. The issue has garnered increasing academic and policy attention in recent years with the concept of "meaningful work," yet little is known about how social stratification relates to access to it. This paper addresses this issue by exploring how the meaningfulness of jobs-as rated by their incumbents-is stratified across classes and occupations in a national survey of 14,000 working adults in the United Kingdom. It finds modest differentials between classes, with those in routine and manual occupations reporting the lowest levels of meaningfulness and those in managerial and professional occupations and small employers and own account workers reporting the highest levels. Detailed job attributes (e.g., job

SUBMITTER: Williams M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9321196 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature