Work attitudes barely shifted after the 2008 crisis across 19 European countries

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An analysis of survey data on 77,567 people in 19 European countries, including the U.K., by Raphaël Piters, of Sorbonne University, France, found little change in attitudes to work between 1999 and 2017. The researcher analyzed answers to a series of questions about work asked for the European Values Study survey in 1999, 2008, and 2017.

The questions that interviewees were asked were: "To fully develop a talent, you need to have a job"; "It is humiliating to receive money without having to work"; "People who do not work become lazy"; "Work is a duty toward society"; and "Work should always come first, even if it means less spare time."

Piters averaged the answers into a score for "work ethic" between 0 and 100, with Western Europeans and Scandinavians scoring lower. Totals averaged 45 in the Netherlands and Iceland, and about 75 in Bulgaria and Romania. The U.K.'s score was 55.

Piters reported at the annual conference of the British Sociological Association (BSA 2026) in Manchester today (Thursday, 9 April) that the results "do not reveal a generalized erosion of work ethic over the period examined. This stability is surprising.

"Most social and political attitudes do change substantially over the same period, for example, environmental concern, attitudes toward immigration or support for the far right. In that sense, work ethic appears quite exceptional.

"The lowest scores are generally found in Scandinavian countries, whereas the highest scores are observed in Eastern Europe, while Western European countries tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the distribution."

The 19 countries included in the survey were: Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, Finland, France, Croatia, Spain, Estonia, Belarus, Germany, Denmark, Lithuania, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Provided by British Sociological Association