For generations, Americans have wrapped their identity in work. We have long celebrated the idea that effort leads to success—the American Dream. Yet right alongside that ideal is a very different sentiment, one captured in the old country anthem: “Take This Job and Shove It.” Hope and resentment, aspiration and frustration—these are twin pillars of the American relationship with work.
From Benjamin Franklin’s admonitions about diligence to Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches tales to the modern myth of the mailroom intern turned CEO, Americans have long believed that who you are is inseparable from what you do. We ask grade-schoolers what they want to be when they grow up, as though identity and occupation are indistinguishable. At social gatherings, we ask strangers about their work before anything else.
But when work is expected to provide not only income but also identity, purpose, passion, and belonging, disappointment becomes almost inevitable. A recent Wall Street Journal–NORC poll found that roughly 70% of Americans now believe the American Dream is out of reach. It’s not that people suddenly dislike working hard—it’s that they no longer believe work will reliably pay off.
For decades, economic shifts have eroded the foundation workers once stood on. Union power weakened. Stable pensions faded. Long-term employment became rare. Workers were told that security was gone—but if they hustled, innovated, over-performed, maybe they’d land on top. The result was a workforce constantly sprinting to stay in place.
Three generations of the Bokor family illustrate this uneasy trade-off.
Arpad “Peter” Bokor, who fled Soviet tanks in Hungary, was grateful just to start at the bottom of an engineering firm. His son, Jeff, believed work could lift him into the social class he envied across the lake. And Jeff’s son, Tyler, steps into a workforce transformed again—this time by automation and AI, where entry-level jobs are shrinking and early-career workers are told to prove themselves before they’ve been allowed to learn.
Each man believed in work. Each made sacrifices. And each, in different ways, discovered that work’s promises are conditional, unstable, and often fleeting.
The financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020 deepened the national unease. Millions were laid off. Workers were reminded that loyalty flows only one way. Those with jobs worked harder than ever—answering Slack pings at midnight, writing emails on weekends, proving their worth in a climate of scarcity. Meanwhile, essential workers risked their lives while being treated as expendable.
Even those who “made it,” like university professor Brandeis Marshall, found the cost unbearable. She left academia for the freedom of self-employment—less pay, but more self-respect.
And now artificial intelligence threatens to displace not just factory laborers, but white-collar workers who once believed they were insulated. Young adults like Tyler look at the ladder their parents climbed and wonder whether it still exists.
Here is the American contradiction laid bare:
We are told work is central to our identities.
We are told to love what we do.
We are told that success is earned.
But we are also shown that jobs are temporary, employers are transactional, and security is an illusion.
The cultural shift happening today is not a rebellion against hard work. It is a reckoning with broken promises. Americans still want to contribute, to create, to build—and yes, to succeed. But they are increasingly unwilling to sacrifice their lives for institutions that no longer promise to protect them in return.
The American Dream is not dead. But the bargain has changed, and workers know it.
The question for the next generation is not just What do you do?
It is What should work be worth?
And who, exactly, is it supposed to serve?