Nearly a quarter of all Americans say their jobs are meaningless

A new poll from YouGov shows 24% of Americans say their jobs do not make a meaningful contribution to the world.

That figure—from an admittedly small sample of 480 respondents from a survey in Aug.—is actually significantly lower than for workers in the U.K., where 37% of workers said their jobs were meaningless, and just 50% said they meaningful.

Still, the results seem significant given that YouGov has also found that “a large majority of Americans would rather work in a cubicle than on an assembly line.”

Seventeen percent of American workers responded with “don’t know.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest factor causing someone to report a meaningful job was family income—higher earnings translated into more “meaningful” responses.

That also likely explains why women were more likely to report less personal fulfillment at their jobs (women make $0.78 for every dollar a man earns).

However, it doesn’t fully explain why Hispanics were most likely to report personally fulfilling jobs among all ethnic categories. As of 2013, Hispanics made 29% less than whites (blacks made 40% less).

Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.