People value being paid appropriately for their work—but national surveys indicate that many working adults report a discrepancy between what they actually earn and what they think they should justly earn. This evidence provides an impetus for examining the factors that shape workers’ justice perceptions of earnings. The present study elaborates on two key distributive justice principles—equity and need—that guide people’s ideas about their just reward. We ask: How do contemporary workers experience and understand the nature of work effort and need? We employ a mixed methods research design to answer this question. First, we analyze focus group interviews among workers in Toronto, Ontario (N = 22), and generate two novel hypotheses about the factors that shape workers’ expectation for greater rewards: “downloaded” and “sideloaded” extra work that induce feelings of overwork, and rising cost of living and the associated financial strain. Second, drawing upon focus group narratives, we operationalize these concepts and test our hypotheses with a 2019 nationally representative sample of Canadian workers (N = 2,111). The results show that downloaded and sideloaded extra work shape greater reward expectations partly through the sense of overload, and rising cost of living and the associated financial strain also shape reward expectations. Furthermore, financial strain amplifies the link between extra work and greater reward expectations. We situate these findings within a broader discussion of the nature of effort and need among contemporary workers and its implications for justice perceptions.

人们重视为他们的工作获得适当的报酬——但全国性的调查表明，许多在职成年人报告说，他们的实际收入与他们认为应该合理赚取的收入之间存在差异。这一证据为检验影响工人对收入公正看法的因素提供了动力。本研究详细阐述了两个关键的分配正义原则——公平和需要——指导人们对其公正回报的看法。我们问：当代工人如何体验和理解工作努力和需求的本质？我们采用混合方法研究设计来回答这个问题。首先，我们分析了安大略省多伦多工人的焦点小组访谈（N = 22），并提出了两个关于塑造工人对更高回报期望的因素的新假设：“下载”和“侧载”额外工作会导致过度工作的感觉，以及生活成本上升和相关的财务压力。其次，利用焦点小组的叙述，我们将这些概念付诸实施，并用 2019 年具有全国代表性的加拿大工人样本来检验我们的假设（N = 2,111)。结果表明，下载和侧载的额外工作部分通过超载感塑造了更高的奖励预期，而不断上涨的生活成本和相关的财务压力也塑造了奖励预期。此外，财务压力放大了额外工作与更高回报期望之间的联系。我们将这些发现置于对当代工人努力和需求的性质及其对正义观念的影响的更广泛讨论中。