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Why Work Is Important (14 Reasons)

John Spacey, updated on January 09, 2025

Work is important as an element of life due to practical reasons such as the income it provides, social reasons such as the respect you may earn in your profession and ethical reasons such as contributing to society. This is so important that in some societies, work is viewed as a human right. Likewise, people commonly find that working life is a key element of their quality of life. The following are common reasons that work is important.

Income

Work provides steady income. This is a primary motivation for work whereby people need work to pay the bills and do the things they want to do in life.

Creating Value for Society

Work is a primary way that people contribute to society. Creating value for the place where you live feels good and is a respectable thing to do with your time and energies.

Sense of Purpose

Having some purpose in life is viewed as an important element of human happiness and thriving. Work can be part of this whereby it can provide you with a direction, purpose and set of goals. This doesn't have to be a grand purpose but can also be a humble one, as long as it has some meaning to you. For example, teaching people to cook so that they may eat better and appreciate food more.

Self-Fulfillment

Developing a sense that you are becoming what you are meant to become. Self-fulfillment may come from many places but work is really key as it represents your productive output in life.

Professional Access

If you do something as a hobby, it is more difficult to get access to the things that professionals in a domain can access due to their professional status. For example, if you are a physics professor you can likely access the resources of institutions, attend academic conferences and get your research published. A hobbyist who is interested in physics wouldn't likely get these opportunities.

Social Connectedness

Workplaces are social environments whereby you have a bunch of people that you interact with each day. You may make friends at work or simply enjoy the comradery of team life. Likewise, work can involve a large number of networking opportunities such as industry conferences or client meetings. People often don't appreciate this social aspect of work until they retire whereby they may realize that this was important.

Life Experience

Work can be an important element of your overall life experience. For example, gaining experience making difficult decisions, solving problems or with public speaking.

Character Building

The challenges that you face at work may help to develop character strengths such as diligence, patience, work ethic, self-discipline, reliability, grit and resilience.

Personal Development

Work may provide training and experiences that allow you to acquire and master talents and abilities.

Source of Respect

People commonly desire respect from others. This is one reason, for example, that people seek social status such as wealth or status symbols such as expensive homes. Employment is a type of social status whereby people tend to respect you for working. Likewise, some professions and employers are high status.

Role Model

There is often an opportunity in a profession to become a leader and to serve as an example to others. Likewise, you may eventually end up mentoring and otherwise helping lots of people in their careers such that you can gain leadership experiences in life.

Source of Accomplishment

As you work, you may accomplish things that you are proud to have achieved. In some cases, you will receive much recognition for small accomplishments but larger accomplishments may go unnoticed. None of this matters much as your own sense of accomplishment in your work can feel very rewarding.

Career Advancement

You may start your career in a low level job but with time you can work towards advancement. In many industries or professions, it is quite common for income to grow quite a bit as you gain experience and take on more responsibility.

Pensions & Retirement

Beyond immediate income, employees will also typically build up pensions and other types of retirement savings through their employer. This may seem like a minor consideration when you are young and far from retirement. However, when you do retire you will be thankful for the contributions you made as these can really accumulate over time.