Drawing on decades of national survey data and thousands of interviews, the book argues that the widespread belief that “a job is just a way of earning money” is both increasingly common and incomplete.
TORONTO, CA — July 13, 2026 — If you suddenly stopped working, what would you miss most? For decades, sociologist Scott Schieman has put that question to thousands of workers across the United States and Canada. Most people mention money first. But as he shows in his new book, I Want M.O.R.E.: Why Your Job Still Matters (University of Toronto, Aevo; August 2026), the answers rarely stop there. Workers also describe missing structure, purpose, connection to colleagues, and the sense of being good at something. New data also spotlights anxieties now surrounding AI and automation. Schieman argues that a narrowly transactional view of work overlooks these “intangible assets,” even as that view has become more popular.
The book’s central claim is grounded in decades of public-opinion data. Since 1989, the share of American workers who reject the idea that a job is “just a way of earning money” has fallen from 64 percent to 36 percent today, with a similar decline in Canada. Yet Schieman complicates the story he’s telling: on other long-running measures, like the classic “lottery question” — would you keep working if you no longer needed the paycheck? — 65 to 70 percent of Americans have said yes for fifty years running, evidence, he argues, that work still supplies something a paycheck doesn’t.
That gap between what people say about work in the abstract and what they actually feel runs through the book. Schieman calls it a “perception glitch.” Schieman’s data tells a different story about how satisfied workers actually were with their jobs, post-pandemic, than the popular narrative suggests. It’s one of several places in the book where Schieman argues the public conversation about work has outrun the evidence.
To help readers act on this research, Schieman distills decades of survey and interview data into the M.O.R.E. framework: Mooring (identity, structure, and purpose), Opening (ability, agency, and creativity), Relating (connection, support, and respect), and Exceeding (recognition, reputation, and status). The book includes a M.O.R.E. self-assessment, metrics for evaluating a current job and clarifying what to look for next, and guidance for navigating difficult workplace situations.
The book also engages directly with the anxieties now surrounding AI and automation. Its epilogue examines predictions of a coming “white-collar bloodbath” — including public warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — against decades of survey data on how workers themselves perceive the threat of automation to their jobs.
I Want M.O.R.E. has drawn advance praise from researchers, journalists, and workplace leaders across North America, including Erin L. Kelly (author of Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It), Juliet Schor (author of Four Days a Week), Arne L. Kalleberg (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and broadcaster Peter Mansbridge, who calls it a book that “unlocks the mystery of work and why we do it.”
About the Author
Scott Schieman is a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, where his research examines what people think and feel about work — and how they talk about it. He is the recipient of the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, and his research focuses on how perceptions of job quality shape a person’s sense of self, status, and well-being.