What are greedy jobs?

Hard work is often seen as the basis for fair reward. But in some of today's highest-paid professions, it's not just about how well you perform. It's about how long you can stay available. Earnings often depend less on skill than on the ability to work long and inflexible hours.

2023 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences recipient Claudia Goldin describes this pattern as "greedy jobs," a concept developed across her research on how work is structured and rewarded.¹,²

Drawing on Goldin’s work, greedy jobs are roles that demand a great deal of time and commitment, often extending beyond normal working hours, and require workers to deprioritize other commitments, such as family responsibilities. These jobs typically offer better rewards for workers who can commit more hours.¹,²

There are several characteristics that describe greedy jobs, such as:

Earnings rise disproportionately with longer and less predictable hours.
Workers are difficult to replace, so one person’s absence creates measurable costs.
Workers who reduce their hours or seek predictable schedules are penalized through lower earnings and may be pushed into less lucrative positions within the same field.

Whether a job is considered greedy does not depend solely on the industry, field, or title. Rather, it depends on the position within an occupation, shaped by the cost of worker substitution and the degree of temporal flexibility required. For example, if a lawyer works at a high-pressure law firm, they may be required to invest more time and energy in their work, even on weekends and holidays, while those who work at low-pressure firms may enjoy a better work-life balance.¹,²

1. Driving the motherhood penalty

Greedy jobs² contribute directly to what economists call the "motherhood penalty", or the systematic career disadvantages women often experience at work after becoming mothers.³ The motherhood penalty is closely tied to caregiving patterns within households, as women tend to take on more childcare responsibilities, making them more likely to reduce work hours or seek flexibility.

Furthermore, a study of six countries, spanning Scandinavia, the German-speaking world, and the English-speaking world, found that women's earnings drop sharply after the birth of a first child and do not recover, while men's earnings are essentially unaffected.⁴

2. Amplifying the income gap through wage structures

The way greedy jobs are compensated compounds the inequality. In fields such as corporate management and finance, Goldin's analysis shows that earnings rise disproportionately with hours worked, meaning that even small reductions in work time can lead to outsized losses in pay.²,⁵

A landmark study co-authored by Goldin on MBA graduates from a leading US business school found that men and women earned similar salaries at graduation, but a substantial gap emerged within a decade, largely reflecting career interruptions and reduced hours following childbirth.²,⁵ By contrast, the Nobel laureate notes that in more flexible occupations such as pharmacy, where standardized procedures and technology have made workers easily substitutable, the gender pay gap has largely disappeared.²

3. Hindering women’s leadership and advancement

Career advancement and what helps women thrive at work in greedy professions often depends on working long and continuous hours. Workers who reduce their hours or take time out face disproportionate setbacks, not only in pay but in their chances of reaching top positions.²

Corporate pipeline data point to a related pattern: McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2025 study finds that women are less likely to be promoted to manager, creating an early gap that widens at senior and C-suite levels. As a result, women hold a smaller share of top leadership roles than their representation in entry-level positions would suggest.⁶

1. Restructuring work to increase substitutability

One solution is to reduce reliance on a single individual. When tasks and client relationships are shared across teams, temporary absences become less costly, and long hours are less financially rewarded.

Pharmacy illustrates what this looks like in practice. As Goldin documents, computer systems that track clients across locations mean that any licensed pharmacist can access a customer's full history and pick up where a colleague left off. If one pharmacist steps away, another can continue without disruption. This has made part-time work viable without a pay penalty, and pharmacy has become one of the most egalitarian high-earning professions.²

As more sectors adopt practices such as team-based coverage, structured knowledge sharing, and standardisation of procedures, the conditions that sustain greedy jobs can be reduced.

2. Supporting both parents through leave policy

OECD evidence shows that when fathers take parental leave, it helps reduce gender-based discrimination in the workplace and mitigate the motherhood penalty, particularly when leave is specifically reserved for fathers. Across the 22 OECD countries with available data, the share of men among parental leave recipients rose from an average of 19.1% in 2013 to 26.1% in 2023, though leave is still far from equally shared between parents.⁷ Designing leave policies with this in mind can complement broader efforts to restructure how work is organized.

3. Normalizing flexibility across the workforce

Claudia Goldin argues that the gender pay gap would shrink significantly if firms reduced the disproportionate rewards for working long hours and particular hours.² Flexibility in this context means enabling workers to adjust when and how much they work, whether through shorter hours, predictable schedules, or time away for caregiving, without facing outsized penalties to their earnings or career progression. When these options are built into how jobs are structured, rather than treated as individual accommodations, they benefit the entire workforce.

However, progress on flexibility is not guaranteed. The same Women in the Workplace 2025 study by McKinsey also found that some companies have begun scaling back remote and flexible work options, a trend that risks disproportionately affecting women.⁶ For flexibility to narrow the gender pay gap, as Goldin's research suggests it can, these arrangements need to remain accessible and embedded in how work is organized.²

Claudia Goldin's body of work reframes the gender pay gap as a design problem, not a personal failure. It's not about differences in education or skills. It's about how work is organized and rewarded. Greedy jobs penalise flexibility and disproportionately reward constant availability, with lasting consequences for gender equality.

But her research also shows that change is possible. When work becomes more transferable between workers and pay rises more evenly with hours, gender gaps shrink, as the pharmacy profession has demonstrated. Goldin notes similar shifts underway in veterinary medicine and parts of healthcare. These examples suggest that fairer workplaces are not only possible but practically achievable. The challenge now is for more industries to follow.

To learn more about Claudia Goldin's work and how it shapes our understanding of gender equality, visit UBS Nobel Perspectives & Economic Views. Our platform offers engaging discussions and policy-relevant insights from Goldin and other Nobel-winning laureates across research and innovation.

References

^1.Sobeck K. Greedy Jobs, Labour Market Institutions, and the Gender Pay Gap. Economic Record, 2024.

^2.Goldin C. A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter. American Economic Review, 2014.

^3.Budig MJ, England P. The Wage Penalty for Motherhood. American Sociological Review, 2001.

^4.Kleven H, Landais C, Posch J, Steinhauer A, Zweimüller J. Child Penalties across Countries: Evidence and Explanations (PDF, 388 KB) . National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019.