Corinne Low
Economist at Wharton.
“And your job does not love you back. If your job goes through downsizing or has a financial crunch, they will lay you off. Love will not keep you there. Okay. You are not actually a family. So I think it's important to be a little bit less romantic about these relationships with our jobs and a little bit more transactional.”
The Stacking Benjamins Show · Money & Markets · October 2026
The Wharton economist points out that people who say they love their jobs never picture working 60 hours a week if money were no object. She suggests thinking of a job as a technology for converting time into money, and checking whether you get out what you put in.
Transcript
…and maintaining them is actually very dependent on those systemic factors. When somebody helps you live your best life, have your all, get your utility needs met, you're going to sustain love and attraction a lot more versus when you feel like someone else's goals are in conflict with yours.
Wow. And actually, you can even apply that to the job, right? You could apply it to your boss. You could apply it to your relationship at work.
…what would you do if you were mega billionaire, nobody says they'd be working 60 hours a week. People like you who say, I love talking to people, I love educating people, and you get a lot of meaning from your job. And for me, too, in doing research and educating people about that research, I get a lot of meaning for my job. If money were no object, do it for like 15 hours a week, maybe 20. And your job does not love you back. If your job goes through downsizing or has a financial crunch, they will lay you off. Love will not keep you there. Okay. You are not actually a family. So I think it's important to be a little bit less romantic about these relationships with our jobs and a little bit more transactional. And as I said, think about our job as a technology for converting our time into money. And the better the technology is, you might get meaning along with it, right? You might get fulfillment along with the money. And that's great. Isn't it great if you can convert your time into money and get meaning and fulfillment at the same time? But I think a big mistake is people were, they're getting all…
I want to take a little detour from this wonderful kind of straightforward walk we're having. When you're talking about love, you also talk about the dating apps. And I find some of this stuff that you brought up so gross. Like just, but the statistics don't lie, right? Stats don't lie. The um…
Well, that's. Exactly, what I mean is that when people say, like, oh, no, it's all about love, and then I can say, like, well, I've run the studies and I can tell you it's not all about love, right? Because if I change people's characteristics, people get a different reaction on dating apps. And…
Been a long time since I've killed a wild boar for Cheryl, Corinne. But I have changed the toilet paper off.
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