A 2024 Saturday Night Live sketch takes viewers to an airplane cabin where a pregnant passenger in labor seeks a doctor, but no one on board is qualified. So, one passenger—a lawyer—volunteers to help on the basis that he has the “second best job” after doctor. Other passengers then jump in with their own claims about engineers, teachers, and mothers being the rightful number two. Debate ensues, leaving both the pregnant woman and the occupational hierarchy in limbo.

Yet previous sociological work on occupational prestige suggests there is one true ladder and ‘everyone’ knows it. If that’s the case, then why does the SNL sketch resonate?

In our recent research, and in previous work, we reconsider how Americans perceive the occupational hierarchy, a concept at the heart of stratification research. We find that the apparent consensus around occupational prestige primarily reflects the views of a small group of highly educated Americans. People outside this group deviate from this consensus, but not in systematic ways, leaving the elites’ consensus to dominate. In the end, there’s much less agreement about the status of occupations than estimates have suggested.

We all want to be recognized for doing good work. Whether it is winning an award, getting a shoutout from your boss, or receiving a great review online, recognition matters. But what happens when the recognition you get doesn’t match your performance?

In our new paper, published in the American Sociological Review, we explore how experiencing misrecognition—either being overlooked despite strong performance or being rewarded despite weak performance—shapes how people later evaluate others. We find that people tend to reproduce the same kind of recognition they themselves received, even when it means rewarding poor performers or ignoring top ones.  

Published jointly for Work in Progress and Power at Work

Employers are increasingly using algorithms and digital devices to control workers. As a new Human Rights Watch report puts it, “Workers around the world are increasingly hired, compensated, disciplined, and fired by algorithms that can be opaque, error-prone, and discriminatory; their faces, office badge swipes, email exchanges, browsing histories, keystrokes, driving patterns, and rest times are scanned to monitor performance and productivity.”

My research shows how this “algorithmic management” does not only affect working conditions; it expands the capacity of employers to subvert the efforts of workers to organize for better treatment.

At this point it has become common knowledge: leveraging your social capital will help you on the job market. We hear it from scholars, who illustrate the benefits that job candidates get from referrals; from career counselors, who encourage us to reach out personal contacts at companies where we hope to work; and online, where we are relentlessly reminded to expand our professional networks to advance our careers. To get a job, it often seems, you have to know someone.

Yet leveraging connections during the job search is at odds with another widespread belief, that hiring should be meritocratic, based on candidates’ qualifications rather than their connections. This gives rise to a tension. On the one hand, we want to maximize our chances of getting the job by getting a foot in the door. On the other, we feel committed to the principle of meritocracy and concerned that using connections may shade into nepotism.

In recent decades, terms such as “meritocracy” and “equality of opportunities” have gained significant political and social traction, while the globe has experienced recurring economic and social crises that widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Amid this growing inequality, one must question whether true social mobility still exists. Can today’s youth, regardless of their background, genuinely aspire to climb the economic ladder, or are they bound by the socioeconomic status they were born into?