The Social Workplace: Social Capital, Human Dignity, and Work in America

Key Points

The American workplace generates social capital. More than half of Americans have met a close friend at work or their spouse’s workplace.
College-educated Americans are much more likely than those without a degree to have found a close friend in the workplace (45 percent vs. 35 percent, respectively). The college-educated are also more likely to benefit from workplace mentoring.
Female workers are more invested in workplace socialization, plan more workplace events, and benefit more from workplace social capital.
Workers who have close workplace friends are more likely to be satisfied with their employment and less likely to look for another job.

Executive Summary

After decades of social capital decline in America across institutions, the workplace continues to be a crucial source of social capital generation. Due to its ubiquity in American society, formal structure, and shared goals of members, the American workplace creates lasting social bonds. More than half of Americans report having made a close friend in the workplace or through their spouse’s work.

Women in particular stand out as workplace social capital catalysts. While for decades the assumption has been that men are more likely to be careerists, our data show that today, college-educated women are more likely to be invested in the workplace, draw identity from their work in mid-career, and create and benefit most from workplace social capital. On the opposite end of this spectrum are noncollege-educated men, who are the least likely to invest in the workplace or benefit from workplace connections personally or professionally.

Social capital at work offers significant payoffs in workplace satisfaction. Americans who have close workplace friends are more likely to be satisfied at work and less likely to be looking for a new job. High workplace social capital is also correlated with general well-being; workers who have close social ties with their colleagues experience less stress, anxiety, and loneliness. However, barriers and obstacles to healthy workplace socialization remain, including remote work, feelings of professional doubt known as “imposter syndrome,” the prevalence of sexist and racist jokes, and code-switching, all of which are present in the American workplace.

Introduction

Work, more often than not, is the center of life for Americans in a way that sometimes mystifies workers in other developed countries. According to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data, Americans work on average hundreds of hours more than their European counterparts do.¹ On top of that, close to one in four US workers do not take paid vacation or paid holidays.² American parents also take less family leave after the birth or adoption of a child.³ But what do Americans expect from work, are they getting it, and how do they prioritize the economic aspects of jobs relative to other types of personal and social benefits work provides?

This is the first of three reports that will examine these questions. In this report, we explore the social dimension of work life and the role it plays in building human connections and strengthening social capital. The second report will explore the relationship between strictly economic considerations such as pay and benefits and the noneconomic needs that work helps meet. The third report will be based on in-depth interviews with survey participants examining how women and men think differently about work, what they value in their jobs, and how they approach the social aspects of work life and culture.

Read the full report.

Notes

1. G. E. Miller, “The U.S. Is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World,” 20 Something Finance, January 20, 2022, https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation; and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Average Annual Hours Actually Worked per Worker,” October 11, 2022, https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS.

2. Adewale Maye, “No-Vacation Nation, Revised,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 22, 2019, https://cepr.net/report/no-vacation-nation-revised.

3. World Population Review, “Maternity Leave by Country 2022,” April 1, 2022, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/maternity-leave-by-country.