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Work or labour ( labor in American English) is the activity people perform to support the needs and desires of themselves, other people, or organizations. In the context of economics, work can be seen as the human activity that contributes (along with other factors of production) towards the goods and services within an economy.
Work has existed in all human societies, either as Payment or unpaid work, from gathering by hand in hunter-gatherer groups to operating complex technology that mechanization or automation effort within an Agriculture, industrial, or post-industrial society. One's regular participation or role in work is an occupation, or job. All but the simplest tasks in any work require specific , , and other resources, such as material for manufacturing goods. Humanity has developed a variety of institutions for group coordination of work, such as Government, nonprofit organizations, , and .
Cultures and individuals across history have expressed a wide range of attitudes towards work. Besides objective differences, one culture may organize or attach social status to work roles through formalized which may carry specialized job titles and provide people with a career. Throughout history, work has been intimately connected with other aspects of society and politics, such as power, social class, tradition, rights, and privileges. Accordingly, the division of labour is a prominent topic across the as both an abstract concept and a characteristic of individual cultures. Work may also present a threat to individual human happiness and survival, either through dirty, dangerous, and demeaning occupations or in extreme cases, from Karoshi.
Some people have also engaged in critique of work and expressed a wish to reduce or abolish it entirely, for example in Paul Lafargue in his book The Right to Be Lazy, David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, or The Abolition of Work by Bob Black. Real world programs to eliminate the economic necessity for lifelong work first emerged through the concept of retirement, and have more recently been extended to all adults through experimentation with universal basic income.
Because sustained effort is a necessary part of many human activities, what qualifies as work is often a matter of context. Specialization is one common feature that distinguishes work from other activities. For example, a sport is a job for a professional athlete who earns their livelihood from it, but a hobby for someone playing for fun in their community. An element of advance planning or expectation is also common, such as when a paramedic provides medical care while on duty and fully equipped rather than performing first aid off-duty as a bystander in an emergency. Self-care and basic habits like personal grooming are also not typically considered work.
While a later gift, trade, or payment may retroactively affirm an activity as productive, this can exclude work like volunteering or activities within a family setting, like parenting or housekeeping. In some cases, the distinction between work and other activities is simply a matter of common sense within a community. However, an alternative view is that labeling any activity as work is somewhat subjective, as Mark Twain expressed in the "whitewashed fence" scene of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
The periodic re-invention of slavery encouraged more consistent work activity in the working class, and capitalist industrialization intensified demands on workers to keep up with the pace of machines. Restrictions on the hours of work and the Child labour followed, with worker demands for time off increasing, but modern office work retains traces of expectations of sustained, concentrated work, even in affluent societies.
Forms of work take on changes over time in response to technological and societal changes. According to a 2024 study, the majority of current employment in the United States was in occupations that had been introduced since 1940.
In complex economies with high specialization, these categories are further subdivided into industries that produce a focused subset of products or services. Some economists also propose additional sectors such as a "knowledge-based" quaternary sector, but this division is neither standardized nor universally accepted.
Another common way of contrasting work roles is ranking them according to a criterion, such as the amount of skill, experience, or seniority associated with a role. The progression from apprentice through journeyman to master craftsman in the is one example with a long history and analogs in many cultures.
Societies also commonly rank different work roles by perceived status, but this is more subjective and goes beyond clear progressions within a single industry. Some industries may be seen as more prestigious than others overall, even if they include roles with similar functions. At the same time, a wide swathe of roles across all industries may be afforded more status (e.g. managerial roles) or less (like manual labour) based on characteristics such as a job being low-paid or dirty, dangerous and demeaning.
Other social dynamics, like how labor is compensated, can even exclude meaningful tasks from a society's conception of work. For example, in modern market-economies where wage labour or piece work predominates, unpaid work may be omitted from economic analysis or even cultural ideas of what qualifies as work.
At a political level, different roles can fall under separate where workers have qualitatively different power or rights. In the extreme, the least powerful members of society may be social stigma (as in untouchability) or even violently forced (via slavery) into performing the least desirable work. Complementary to this, may have exclusive access to the most prestigious work, largely symbolic , or even a "life of leisure".
Unusual Occupations
In the diverse world of work, there exist some truly bizarre and unusual occupations that often defy conventional expectations. These unique jobs showcase the creativity and adaptability of humans in their pursuit of livelihood.
Particularly intense forms of manual labour often lead workers to develop physical strength necessary for their job. However, this activity does not necessarily improve a worker's overall physical fitness like exercise, due to problems like overwork or a small set of repetitive motions. In these physical jobs, maintaining good human position or movements with proper technique is also a crucial skill for avoiding injury. Ironically, white-collar workers who are sedentary throughout the workday may also suffer from long-term health issues due to a lack of physical activity.
For other tasks needing large amounts of power, such as in the construction industry, or involving a highly-repetitive set of simple actions, like in mass manufacturing, complex can carry out much of the effort. The workers present will focus on more complex tasks, operating controls, or performing maintenance. Over several millennia, invention, science, and engineering principles have allowed humans to proceed from creating that merely redirect or amplify force, through for harnessing supplementary power sources, to today's complex, regulated systems that automate many steps within a work process.
In the 20th century, the development of electronics and new mathematical insights led to the creation and widespread adoption of fast, general-purpose . Just as mechanization can substitute for the physical labour of many human beings, computers allow for the partial automation of mental work previously carried out by human workers, such as calculations, document transcription, and basic customer service requests. Research and development of related technologies like machine learning and robotics continues into the 21st century.
Beyond tools and machines used to actively perform tasks, workers benefit when other passive elements of their work and environment are designed properly. This includes everything from personal items like workwear and safety gear to features of the workspace itself like furniture, lighting, HVAC, and even the underlying architecture.
Economic organizations often reflect social thought common to their time and place, such as ideas about human nature or hierarchy. These unique organizations can also be historically significant, even forming major pillars of an economic system. In European history, for instance, the decline of and rise of joint-stock companies goes hand-in-hand with other changes, like the growth of centralized states and capitalism.
In industrialized economies, are another significant organization. In isolation, a worker that is easily replaceable in the labour market has little power to demand better wages or conditions. By banding together and interacting with business owners as a corporate entity, the same workers can claim a larger share of the value created by their labour. While a union does require workers to sacrifice some autonomy in relation to their coworkers, it can grant workers more control over the work process itself in addition to material benefits.
These complex institutions, however, still have roots in common human activities. Even the of modern capitalist societies rely fundamentally on trade, while command economies, such as in many during the 20th century, rely on a highly bureaucracy and hierarchical form of redistribution.
Other institutions can affect workers even more directly by delimiting practical day-to-day life or basic legal rights. For example, a caste system may restrict families to a narrow range of jobs, inherited from parent to child. In serfdom, a peasant has more rights than a slave but is attached to a specific piece of land and largely under the power of the landholder, even requiring permission to physically travel outside the land-holding. How institutions play out in individual workers' lives can be complex too; in most societies where wage labour predominates, workers possess equal rights by law and mobility in theory. Without social support or other resources, however, the necessity of earning a livelihood may force a worker to cede some rights and freedoms in fact.
Christian theologians see the fall of man as profoundly affecting human work. In Genesis 3:17, God said to Adam, "cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life".English Standard Version Leland Ryken said that, because of the fall, "many of the tasks we perform in a fallen world are inherently distasteful and wearisome."Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective (Portland: Multnomah, 1987), 120. Christian theologians interpret that through the fall, work has become toil, but John Paul II says work is good for man in spite of this toil, and that "perhaps, in a sense, because of it", because work is something that corresponds to man's dignity and through it, he achieves fulfilment as a human being.John Paul II, Laborem exercens, § 9. Drawing on Aristotle, Ryken suggests that the moral ideal is the golden mean between the two extremes of being lazy and a workaholic.Ryken, Work and Leisure, 176. Some Christian theologians also draw on the doctrine of redemption to discuss the concept of work. Oliver O'Donovan said that although work is a gift of creation, it is "ennobled into mutual service in the fellowship of Christ."Oliver O'Donovan, "Christian Moral Reasoning," in David J. Atkinson and David H. Field (eds), New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 123. Pope Francis was critical of the hope that technological progress might diminish the need for work: "the goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity", Laudato si' and McKinsey suggests work will change, but not end, as a result of automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence.
For some, work may hold a spiritual value in addition to secular notions. Especially in some monastic or mystical strands of several , simple manual labour may be held in high regard as a way to maintain the body, cultivate self-discipline and humility, and focus the mind.
Another difficulty, which has emerged in most societies as a result of urbanization and industrialization, is unemployment. While the shift from a subsistence economy usually increases the overall productivity of society and lifts many out of poverty, it removes a baseline of material security from those who cannot find employment or other support. Governments have tried a range of strategies to mitigate the problem, such as improving the efficiency of job matching, conditionally providing welfare spending benefits or unemployment insurance, or even directly overriding the labour market through work-relief programs or a job guarantee. Since a job forms a major part of many workers' self-identity, unemployment can have severe psychological and social consequences beyond the financial insecurity it causes.
One more issue, which may not directly interfere with the functioning of an economy but can have significant indirect effects, is when governments fail to account for work occurring out-of-view from the public sphere. This may be important, uncompensated work occurring every day in private life; or it may be criminal activity that involves clear but furtive economic exchanges. By ignoring or failing to understand these activities, economic policies can have counter-intuitive effects and cause strains on the community and society.
According to the World Bank, globally the rate of child labour has decreased from 25% to 10% between the 1960s to the early years of the 21st century. Nevertheless, given that the population of the world also increased, the total number of child labourers remains high, with UNICEF and ILO noting that an estimated 168 million children aged 5–17 worldwide were involved in some sort of child labour in 2013.
Some scholars like Jean-Marie Baland and James A. Robinson suggests any labour by children aged 18 years or less is wrong since this encourages illiteracy, inhumane work and lower investment in human capital. In other words, there are moral and economic reasons that justify a blanket ban on labour from children aged 18 years or less, everywhere in the world. On the other hand, some scholars like Christiaan Grootaert and Kameel Ahmady believe that child labour is the symptom of poverty. If laws ban most lawful work that enables the poor to survive, the informal economy, illicit operations and underground businesses will thrive.
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