Winning the Lottery, but Keeping Your Job

Call me a cynic, but this trend surprised me:

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 7-11, 2013, with a random sample of 1,039 adults who are employed full or part time. Results based on the total sample of working adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

According to Gallup, two-thirds of American workers say they would continue working even if they won $10 million in the lottery.

I suppose it would not surprise me if that many people said they wanted to continue working, but would switch to a new, fantasy career that they had forgone because it did not pay enough or was too risky (nonprofit work, opening a cupcake bakery, etc.). But most people who say they would continue working specified that they would like to continue in their current jobs.

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 7-11, 2013, with a random sample of 1,039 adults who are employed full or part time. Results based on the total sample of working adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

I guess this means people just really enjoy their jobs much more than I had expected, which would be heartening.

Note that the share of survey respondents who say they would continue working is higher than it was the last three times Gallup asked this question, all before the recent recession (2005, 2004, 1997). I wonder if the recession has changed people’s attitudes about work, or at least how people want their work ethic to be perceived. Perhaps unemployment has been so high for so long that survey respondents feel obligated to tell strangers about how very much they love their jobs. No one wants to be idle, or a member of the idle rich.

“It may be that workers today have a renewed appreciation for the value of having a job â€" even if they were to become independently wealthy,” writes Frank Newport on Gallup’s site.

Gallup broke down the responses by other demographics, which were also informative.

Source: Gallup

While Gen Y (like every generation of youth before it) is often accused of being lazy good-for-nothings, young people are most likely to say they would continue working if they won the lottery.

The responses vary by education, too, with the least and the most educated most likely to say they would keep their current jobs in the event of a financial windfall.

About half of respondents with postgraduate degrees and half of respondents with no more than a high school diploma said they would stick with their current positions if they won the lottery. Only about a third of respondents with some college or a college degree but no postgraduate work said they would stick with their current jobs.

Of course, surveying people about what they would do in very low-probability situations can produce distorted results. We also know that people who win the lottery tend to be bad at managing their financial situations afterward.