With election season underway and polls flooding in, everyone seems eager to psychoanalyze voter behavior, often reduced to the cynical idea that people simply “vote with their wallet.” But that explanation falls short: if it were true, the 27.5% of the population that Greece’s statistical authority ELSTAT classifies as at risk of poverty or social exclusion would consistently back redistributive, socially just policies.

In reality, voting (or abstaining) rests on criteria too complex to fit into that one box. Political behavior also extends well beyond the ballot box, showing up in how people act at work, in social life, in public spaces, and even at home.

The question is it the pay we do or our our profession, skills, and how production itself is organized, that shapes our political views. The evidence says the latter plays a substantial role, though the effects aren’t simple or one-directional.

A recent interdisciplinary comparative study attempts to map the relationship between work and politics systematically, correlating workplace factors with political outcomes without always mapping them onto a left-right axis.

Job insecurity and eroding trust

One finding: job insecurity and low wages correlate with reduced trust in political and state institutions.

Democratic structures at work, like union freedom and collective bargaining, are linked to greater political participation outside the workplace. Working hours also matter, longer hours tend to correlate with more right-leaning views, possibly reflecting differences across industries.

The study stresses that these correlations aren’t always clear-cut and vary by country, but a common thread holds: what we do for eight-plus hours a day, for most of our adult lives, shapes who we are outside of work too.

How work shapes political attitudes

Drawing on 25 years of research across business administration and political science, the study looks at how individual work experiences, categorized broadly into job content, work environment, employment characteristics, and workplace social relationships, relate to political participation, attitudes, trust, and values outside work. Both empowering work experiences (skill use, autonomy, higher income, more social interaction) and negative ones (job or economic insecurity) were linked to greater political participation, though their effects on trust and attitudes toward economic and cultural issues diverge.

Greece’s trust deficit

The study also cites Eurofound’s latest “Living and Working in Europe” report, finding that social cohesion, institutional trust, and political participation are directly affected by workers’ economic hardship.

Low-income workers show markedly lower trust in news media and lower satisfaction with democracy. The age groups facing the most economic pressure, 35 to 49 and 50 to 65, also show the lowest trust in national governments. Greece has one of the lowest trust ratings for government in Europe, just 2.5 on a 1-to-10 scale, behind only Hungary (2.2) and Bulgaria (2.3), both countries with the EU’s lowest real wages.

Key findings by category

• Political participation: Jobs offering skill use, autonomy, higher income, and positive social ties correlate with higher participation (voting, activism); job or economic insecurity also drives participation, often through protest.
• Political attitudes: High-skill, autonomous jobs correlate with more liberal, pro-immigration views but less support for income redistribution; supervisory roles correlate with more conservative views; job insecurity and low income correlate with more support for redistribution and sometimes more culturally conservative (anti-immigration) attitudes.
• Political trust: Job autonomy correlates with greater trust in institutions and democratic satisfaction; job insecurity and prolonged low pay undermine trust and fuel cynicism.
• Workplace social relationships: Positive interactions with colleagues or clients correlate with greater participation and sometimes more progressive attitudes; union membership and workplace democracy correlate with higher participation and trust, though effects on attitudes vary.
• Mixed effects: Both empowering and negative work experiences can boost participation, but they pull trust and attitudes in opposite directions, and all these effects vary by country, sector, and institutional context (welfare provisions, labor law).