'Workism' isn't the enemy

It's not wrong to find meaning and identity primarily in your work. The danger lies elsewhere.

- Matthew Hammerton

Criticism of work is nothing new. Long hours, low pay, uninspiring tasks – these are longstanding and justified grievances. But in recent years, a different concern has emerged: not that work is miserable, but that we expect too much from it. According to this line of thought, finding meaning and identity primarily in your job – a tendency now labelled "workism" – is misguided, even dangerous.

That critique deserves a closer look. While workism can certainly go wrong, dismissing it outright risks pathologising a life choice that, for many people, is both reasonable and fulfilling. To understand why, we need to clarify what critics are actually opposing.

At the heart of the debate lies a common confusion: Much of what critics call workism is actually "statusism" – drawing most of your meaning and identity from your place in a social hierarchy.

When you work for status, the goal is to have a job that looks impressive regardless of whether the work itself is meaningful. Titles, salaries, credentials, even lifestyle branding, become the currency of success. By contrast, workism is about finding meaning in the work itself rather than the image it projects.

This distinction matters because grounding your life in the pursuit of status is deeply problematic in ways that workism is not.

First, status hierarchies are inherently zero-sum. For someone to rise, another must fall. That makes statusism a competitive pursuit. When you derive your identity from your rank in the social order, other people's success becomes a threat, and their failure a cause for celebration. This fosters a corrosive, adversarial mindset that erodes trust, solidarity and our natural impulse to cheer for others.