Britain has not fallen out of love with work. But a growing number of people appear to be disappointed by the jobs they have, the rewards they receive and the control they exercise over their working lives.
According to the latest British Social Attitudes research, analysed by economist Hannah Slaughter of the Resolution Foundation, 74% of workers were satisfied with their main job in 2025, compared with 81% in 2015. It is the lowest proportion recorded in the survey’s long-running series.
There is an important qualification: nearly three-quarters of workers remain satisfied. Britain is not a country in which everybody hates their job. Yet the direction of travel deserves attention, particularly when the same research finds that workers feel less connected to their employers and less optimistic about their prospects.
Wanting to work is not the problem
It is fashionable to suggest that Britain has developed a poor work ethic, especially among younger people. The survey provides little support for that conclusion.
Just 4% of working-age adults say they would ideally prefer not to work at all, a proportion that has changed little over the past decade. Among people under 30 who are not full-time students, the figure is 2%.
What has changed is the amount of time people would like to devote to paid employment. The proportion of working-age adults who would ideally work full-time fell from 57% in 2015 to 47% in 2025. Among men, the fall was particularly pronounced.
That does not necessarily indicate a lack of ambition. It may reflect a reassessment of family life, health, caring responsibilities or the balance between earnings and personal time. The survey establishes a shift in preferences, not a single explanation for it.
Nor should we confuse employees doing their jobs with employees being willing to give their employer something extra. The proportion who said they were prepared to work harder than required to help their organisation succeed fell from 69% to 55% over the decade. That is a measure of attachment to an employer, not evidence that people are failing to fulfil their responsibilities.
The gap between what people want and what jobs provide
Perhaps the most striking findings concern expectations. In 2015, 67% of workers said a high income was important in a job. By 2025, that figure had risen to 78%. Yet only 23% felt their current job provided a high income.
The desire to decide one’s own working hours also increased, from 46% to 61%. Only 31% said they could exercise that control in their present job.
The picture extends beyond pay and flexibility. The proportion of workers who described their job as interesting fell from 74% to 63%. Those reporting opportunities for advancement declined from 35% to 26%.
These are perceptions, and a person’s idea of a high income is subjective. Nevertheless, the figures suggest a widening mismatch between what employees value and what they experience. It is hardly surprising if enthusiasm suffers when progression seems unlikely and day-to-day decisions feel beyond one’s control.
But employers face difficult choices too
Any discussion about better jobs needs to acknowledge the pressures on the organisations providing them. It is relatively straightforward to call for higher wages, more training and greater flexibility. Delivering all three can be much harder, particularly for smaller businesses.
The Office for National Statistics reported that median weekly earnings for full-time employees rose by 5.8% in the year to April 2026, or 2.7% after adjusting for inflation. The corresponding real-terms change for part-time employees was a slight fall of 0.1%.
Those figures do not settle the argument about living standards. They describe one year, and they cannot tell us whether individual workers feel adequately rewarded. They do, however, show that pay and job satisfaction do not necessarily move together.
Meanwhile, an October survey by the British Chambers of Commerce found that 71% of businesses attempting to recruit had struggled to find staff, while only 23% planned to expand their workforce over the following three months. Most respondents were small or medium-sized enterprises.
The Chambers represents employers, so its interpretation of rising labour costs is not neutral. But the underlying difficulty is worth taking seriously. A small company cannot promise the pay, benefits and career structure of a large organisation simply because it would like to.
That is not an excuse for poor conditions or indifferent management. It is a reminder that improving work requires attention to the economics of the business as well as the reasonable expectations of its employees.
Flexibility should not be an office-worker privilege
Too often, the debate about flexibility begins and ends with working from home. Yet millions of people work in care, cleaning, hospitality, retail, transport and other occupations that require them to be somewhere at a particular time.
For them, flexibility may mean knowing a rota well in advance, having some say over shifts, being able to arrange time off for an appointment or not facing unpredictable changes to working hours.
These adjustments are not always simple. Employers must cover essential work and treat colleagues fairly when requests conflict. But the principle is broader than remote working: people want some reasonable influence over how employment fits into the rest of their lives.
The same applies to advancement. Not every job offers a promotion ladder. Employers can still provide feedback, recognise experience, invest in useful skills and explain honestly what opportunities exist.
A problem for Britain, not just for individual workplaces
The consequences of dissatisfaction may reach beyond the office, factory or shop floor. Workers who see little prospect of improvement may become less committed to their employer, but that does not necessarily mean they have an alternative job available.
The British Social Attitudes analysis found that the proportion expecting to look for another job had changed little since 2015, even as actual job moves declined. That suggests an appetite for change which the labour market is not always satisfying.
It would be a mistake to claim that falling morale is the cause of Britain’s weak productivity. Productivity depends on investment, skills, management, infrastructure and many other factors. The survey cannot establish a causal link. But employers should surely be concerned when fewer people see a reason to contribute more than the minimum required.
The answer cannot be to demand that employees recover an older sense of loyalty regardless of what they receive in return. Nor can every business absorb unlimited increases in pay and employment costs.
What Britain needs is a more serious conversation about the quality of work: how jobs are designed, how people are treated, what employers can realistically afford and how public policy might support both better employment and productive businesses.
Most people still want to work. The challenge is to ensure that working life gives them more reasons to feel that their effort is worthwhile.
