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Article

The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I)

by
Stuart Carr
1,*,
Veronica Hopner
1,*,
Ines Meyer
2,
Annamaria Di Fabio
3,
John Scott
4,
Ingo Matuschek
5,
Denise Blake
6,
Mahima Saxena
7,
Raymond Saner
8,
Lichia Saner-Yiu
8,
Gustavo Massola
9,
Stephen Grant Atkins
10,
Walter Reichman
11,
Jeffrey Saltzman
12,
Ishbel McWha-Hermann
13,
Charles Tchagneno
14,
Rosalind Searle
15,
Jinia Mukerjee
16,
David Blustein
17,
Sakshi Bansal
18,
Ingrid K. Covington
19,
Jeff Godbout
20 and
Jarrod Haar
1add Show full author list remove Hide full author list
1
School of Psychology, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Massey University, Auckland 1311, New Zealand
2
School of Management Studies, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7701, South Africa
3
Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology, University of Florence, 50121 Florence, Italy
4
APT Metrics, Westport, CT 06838, USA
5
Sociological Institute, University of Applied Labour Studies of the Federal Employment Agency, 68163 Mannheim, Germany
6
School of Health, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
7
Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182, USA
8
Centre for Socioeconomic Development, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
9
Insituto de Psicologia, University of Sao Paolo, São Paulo 05508-070, Brazil
10
Space Systems Consulting Ltd., Dunedin 9010, New Zealand
11
Baruch College, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12246, USA
12
OrgVitality, Westchester County, NY 10551, USA
13
Business School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK
14
Laboratoire de Psychologie, Universite de Franche-Comte, 25030 Besançon, France
15
Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
16
MBS School of Business, 34080 Montpellier, France
17
Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02459, USA
18
Youth Ambassador, 34185 Paris, France
19
Centre of Psychology at Work, 1110 Brussels, Belgium
20
Global Organisation for Humanitarian Work Psychology, Virginia Beach, VA 23450, USA
 
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*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2025, 17(14), 6295; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146295
Submission received: 30 April 2025 / Revised: 27 June 2025 / Accepted: 2 July 2025 / Published: 9 July 2025
(This article belongs to the Section Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development)
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Abstract

The concept of a sustainable livelihood affords protection from crises and protects people, including future generations. Conceptually, this paper serves as a study protocol that extends the premises of decent work to include and integrate criteria that benefit people, planet, and prosperity. Existing measures of sustainability principally serve organisations and governments, not individual workers who are increasingly looking for ‘just transitions’ into sustainable livelihoods. Incorporating extant measurement standards from systems theory, vocational psychology, psychometrics, labour and management studies, we conceptualise a classification of livelihoods, criteria for their sustainability, forming a study protocol for indexing these livelihoods, a set of theory-based propositions, and a pilot test of this context-sensitive model.

1. Background: A Great Disruption

This article is the first iteration of a work in progress to reorganize the way work and occupations are conceived, and choices for career decisions are made in the 21st century. The article conceptualises a new multi-collar classification of work and applies it to articulate a new protocol for identifying the most to least sustainable forms of work, against the triple bottom line that underlies the UN SDGs (People, Planet, Prosperity). We describe and define a new classificatory Wheel of Work (what is carried out in the paper), and a protocol which uses it to define a future process for building sustainable livelihood indexes (which still needs to be achieved). The article further argues that standard-setting of this kind has the potential to guide livelihood and career decisions for people seeking a just transition. Further, the article concludes by linking Sustainability to the systems dynamics of success-to-the-successful, whereby the index itself will motivate individuals, organisations, and government workforce departments to invest personally, organizationally, and governmentally in the more sustainable forms of livelihood, and to disinvest in the least sustainable forms of work. We conclude that a protocol for indexing the collars of work will contribute at micro, mid, and macro levels, to Sustainability, and we lay out future plans for the next iteration, which will include the creation of the index and its evaluation as a tool for advancing Sustainability.
The world of work has fundamentally changed and continues to be in a state of flux and uncertainty [1]). Pre-pandemic, there had been a concerted promotion of full and productive employment and Decent Work for all [2]. This was already a tall order, since most of the world’s workforce did not have formal jobs, and even those who did were mostly failing to make ends meet [3,4]. Post-Pandemic, in the formal economy, we have witnessed significant challenges such as the Great Resignation by those who can afford to leave, and majority levels of Quiet Quitting among those who likely cannot [5,6]. The resultant plummet in levels of work engagement and productivity has prompted a renewed question, “Is the Global Workplace at a Breaking Point? [7] (p. 5)
Standing still in the face of such a crisis is not a sustainable option. Unemployment is stuck at 5%, and the global ‘jobs gap’ (people seeking but not finding work), after job losses and gains due to digitalization, remains high at 435 million [8] Available working hours have dropped to below their pre-pandemic level, whilst working poverty and inequality continue to rise (ibid). Just shy of 60% of the world’s workers (two billion people, or around two-thirds of the world’s total working population) work informally. They are not in formal ‘jobs’, with legal and social protections like minimum guaranteed wages, but rather are often (not always, of course), ‘vulnerable’ [9]
In the light of such statistics and trends, in the UN’s own assessment of the world of work, “concerns are [now] rising that the [changes]...are structural, rather than cyclical, in nature” [8] (p.1), parentheses and emphasis added). Exacerbating and overarching all such concerns, however, is the planet’s life-support climate system, now visibly and undeniably degenerating. Much of this degeneration, just as undeniably, is being wrought by, and reciprocally impacts on, work. We would add to this assessment that the world of work is not only under-delivering structurally, but also functionally. Put simply, work structures are not functioning for people. In a nutshell, ‘Work isn’t working’ for either people or planet.
Since 2021, the ILO has called for overtly human-centred responses to countermand the ongoing structural changes across the wide world of work, including working poverty, mass precarity, and the burgeoning informal sector [10,11]. Functionally, our proposed index is designed, first and foremost, for people making early, mid, and later career decisions, including vocational and career counsellors. It does so by reducing endemic uncertainty on where to work and what. We use the wheel of work and its collars to answer a challenge posed to researchers worldwide, to answer the following question, “What kinds of work contribute to human flourishing?” [1] (pp. 2-3)
A Sustainable Livelihood Index would set a human-centred standard supporting Decent Work for all and thereby respond to wider calls to address climate action and social sustainability goals, in addition to economic prosperity [12] Such standards can help to buffer present and future generations from crises by broaching intersections between work and climate [13] Indexing is important for education, business, governance, investment, markets, and organisations.

Ambition and Objective of the Current Paper

Faced with deep-set threats, disruptions are also opportunities—in this case to revitalise and even re-imagine the future of work’s conceptual architecture, and its functioning, in everyday life [12,14]
Contributing to such a re-imagining, in this paper we firstly propose a new integrative classification system made up of thirteen, often interchangeable and intersecting metaphorical collars (Skilled Trades, Service Care, Public Service, Green Work, Armed Forces, Creative Arts, Extractive Industries, Transport Services, Robotic AI, Elite Professional, Unfree Work, Clerical Admin, Manufacturing—see Figure 1 below). Akin perhaps to Weber’s notion of ‘ideal types,’ these collars identify and classify the types of work people commonly do, and where they do it. Encompassing sectors, industries, and livelihoods (defined as types of work activities, professions, roles, occupations, or jobs), these 13 collars are reorganised into a dynamic Wheel of Work that complements existing job and occupational classification systems. Flat-structured and circular, with interchangeable and intersecting segments, the Wheel of Work includes both the formal and informal sectors, and each collar is of equal importance.
Next, taking the 10 most common livelihoods under each of the 13 collars enables an identification of the greatest number of workers and thereby the most Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impacts that those same livelihoods can have. Creating a Sustainable Livelihood Index (SL-I) through rating each livelihood against three core sustainability criteria (environment, social, governance), ranks common livelihoods from most to least sustainable, and therefore the most impactful on people and planet. These ranks incorporate digitalisation [15] generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), and gig work mediated by digital platforms [16]. The index essentially humanises sustainable development by complementing more macro-level measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) [17]
Over time, an index ranking of sustainable livelihoods, we propose, will progressively motivate workers seeking just transition, employers competing on ESG, and governments investing in workforce development [18]. It will thereby proactively foster Sustainable Livelihoods [3,19]. It will guide Just Transitions, by indicating Sustainable Work [12,20,21]. It will therefore serve the Human perspective in Sustainability Sciences [22]
Importantly, our contribution seeks to advance sustainability theory and psychological science by providing a unique cross-amalgamation of working that captures the reality of the world of work across both formal and informal sectors that have been called for by scholars in work sciences [23,24] Such an inclusive pathway to understanding work, not in isolation, but with people, communities, and the planet all at the forefront, can be a guiding light for the future era of work.

2. A Functional Classification

It is important to state that the system we are about to propose is not competing with more macro-level classifications of work, such as the standard-setting [25] There are important and widely agreed international classification taxonomies for classifying sectors (e.g., ANZSIC; ISIC; NAICS; UK SIC; World Bank) and occupations (e.g., ANZSCO: ESCO: ISCO; NOC: O *NET: SOC). Resources like the STAN industry list further brings the sectors and occupations together more specifically. These established and agreed taxonomies give the level of measurement and detail, especially around defining skills, abilities, and qualifications that are used for multiple purposes—including policy-setting, visa criteria, pay and workplace standards, psychometric testing, and vocational guidance.
Intersecting with these older systems, this paper proposes a complementary classification and integration of work—the Wheel of Work (Figure 1). Importantly, our proposed classification does not ‘reinvent the wheel.’ Rather, it takes existing collars, such as white and blue, but it also adds new ones that were not, and thus are not, represented in the existing classifications above. A primary example of the latter is ‘green’ collar work [26]. Green collar jobs, Hopner et al.’s empirical analysis of job advertisements in New Zealand showed, intersected with a wide range of existing and new jobs; intersecting with aspirations of a whole new generation of first-time jobseekers, as well as older workers transitioning from less green to greener forms of work. The development of new classification systems, as the world changes, is a fundamental requirement for advancing scientific knowledge and science in general [27]
The 13-collar classification system was derived using a Delphi-style process involving our multi-author team. We iteratively reviewed existing literature on occupational categories, class-related ‘collar’ metaphors, and global informal work realities. This process was guided by both empirical inclusion of informal sector realities and theoretical comprehensiveness across job types and sectors. The final set of 13 collars was chosen to balance comprehensiveness, recognizability, and utility for indexing sustainable livelihoods.
With such intersections in mind, each of the rotatable and interchangeable segments below denotes a collar, which encompasses sectors and livelihoods (types of work activities, professions, roles, occupations, and jobs). Dividing each segment is an imaginary dotted line, which denotes the formal and informal sectors of work within which work is located. Importantly, we move away from the more typical and normative axial diagrams that tend to starkly delineate and separate components into clearly defined boundaries and psychometrically adjacent dimensions [28,29] Our wheel is intended to mirror the reality of the world of work today, which incorporates how individuals move through their work lives, often travelling between and across sectors, piecing together a livelihood. The aim is to capture work in all its varied and diverse forms, manifestations, and prevalence around the world. Thus, our spinning wheel of work is intended to speak to a global audience, to capture the realities of workers worldwide. Whilst the wheel aims to cover 100% of the formal and informal labour market globally, it is fully recognised that the world of work is constantly and rapidly evolving. Hence, no system is ever perfect.
With that caveat in mind, we now use and build on the metaphor of a collar as historically collars were invoked to denote economic class constraints vs. freedoms, specifically being able to wear, at work, either a blue or a white collar. Today, these collars of work are conceptually much more differentiated and diverse, and we have divided these into work parlance as coloured collar ‘segments’ (rather than sectors). Furthermore, within each of the 13 collar segments sits both formal and informal work. As we have seen, often excluded from existing occupational, sector, and industry labour classification standards are the 58% or 2 billion of the world’s working population employed in the informal economy [12]. Informal work includes, for example, up to 90% of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) worldwide [30]. Existing classification standards have arguably failed to fully respect this mass ‘sector’ [8], given ongoing losses in formal jobs [8] and unregulated commodification opportunities on the internet, which may presage that it is the informal that is on the ascendant, rather than vice versa.
Turning around the wheel of work and accounting for both the formal and the bigger informal economy, Table 1 illustrates some of the diversity of livelihood activities that may be subsumed under any given collar. At this point, the reader may wish to scan the table and consider situationally relevant examples. The first two authors have so far performed this and used Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), in which raters self-check and resolve any differences by consensus [31,32] to verify the entries in Table 1. Broadly speaking, we found that the collar system can assimilate a variety of occupations.
However, it is important to point out that the suggestions in Table 1 remain tentative and hypothetical only for the purposes of illustration. They will no doubt change once the ten most popular livelihoods are derived. We would like to point out, for instance, that a migrant maid, for example, can be either informal or formal, as in many EU countries, domestic workers (predominantly of migrant origin) are on the formal labour market. Equally hypothetically, other occupations, such as a secondary school teacher, a volunteer for a local church, a CEO, and a security guard, may appear, at first glance, not to have a clear classification. However, we would suggest that a teacher could wear a combination of white, gold, red (public school), and possibly pink (special needs teacher). A church volunteer may conceivably wear red, pink, and white. A CEO would wear gold plus any other collar (s) that matched their sector. A security guard would wear khaki, pink, and possibly black (e.g., transport guard).
The collar colours in Figure 1 and Table 1 stem from and build on extant studies, both research and practice, formal and informal. The oldest roots are white and blue collars, introduced during the earlier part of the last century, for instance, during times of economic crisis [33]. A white-collar occupation denoted clean work, with no dirt (which would too easily show if it were white). A blue collar, however, implied poorly paid manual work (with an attendant need for a blue collar that would more readily hide the dirt).
More recently, however, grey collars have been defined as being commonly found in intersections between blue and white, in work that entails both manual operation and technical skills [34]. In Table 2, therefore, we use this definition of grey collar work, instead of any other definitions which refer to older, semi-retired, or retired workers.
Also included in Figure 1 and Table 1 is pink-collar work. This term is already coined and used to differentiate care service work from both blue- and white-collar roles [35]. A red collar, in turn, is used to denote public service work, whether informal (e.g., auxiliary work such as sponsored dog rescue, or stipend charity work) or formal (e.g., firefighter, in Table 1). This kind of work has been contrasted with rising green work, which instead supports the environment [36], for example, in clean energy and sustainability [37]
An additional form of service work is with the armed services (forces). Sometimes called ‘brown’ work, but historically was first termed Khaki, after military uniforms of the day [38]. Taking the historical colouring, Table 1 extends this khaki segment to include not only formal armies and soldiering, but also, for example, paramilitaries or any form of unofficial armed service activity that can become livelihood-related.
We have introduced other colours which do not appear to have their own extant literature (i.e., yellow, brown, black). Yellow-collar work is any work that is freely creative, from a social influencer to a graphic designer (Table 1) or a skilled rural artisan weaver working in the informal sector [39]. Brown work is linked to extraction and production, from farming to mining, whilst Black is linked to transportation and transport services of any kind, from truck driving to unofficial taxi driving (Table 1).
Two further collars (in Figure 1) are silver and gold. The former we have introduced to denote work performed by machines and intelligent robots, and about machines and AI, from Bots to robotic engineers (in Table 1). Unlike silver work, the gold collar has a more established literature [40]. In the past, it has been used to denote elite class work that requires a great deal of education and/or training (for example, as a professional athlete), and which can be lucrative. In Table 1, however, we have extended this category to include informal work [41] that may be just as if not more lucrative, for example, dealing in illegal drugs (as a drug cartel boss (We realise this might be somewhat provocative but are not at this stage commenting on the ethics, or the sustainability, but rather considering features like specialised knowledge, high pay, and leadership.)), or an intergenerationally skilled artisan who undergoes thorough training and at-home apprenticeship and mentoring [39]
The colour orange (often associated with prisoners) denotes unfree work. The most obvious example of such unfree work in the formal economy is very poorly paid prison labour. In the US, state and federal prisoners are mandated to work through policies anchored in the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as a punishment as a result of conviction [42] ). Beyond the formal economy, unfree work arises from processes of abduction, deception, fraud, and all other “situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power” [43] (p. 9). For example, migrants trafficked into Myanmar are forced to work in clandestine bitcoin scams whilst being held against their will in remote prison-like camps [44].
Crucially, wheels have connecting axles for connecting with, and moving through, the world, and the metaphorical shared central origin in Figure 1 allows for one person, and one work role in Table 1, to wear more than one (and non-adjacent) collar, e.g., Black-and-green (if working in transportation in the renewable energy sector (Hydrogen not diesel truck driver); and orange-and-brown (a trafficked fisher or militia press-ganged child miner in Table 1); A firefighter (red collar) may also do building work (grey) on their rostered days-off. Or someone may work on an IT help desk (grey collar) by day, plus be an Uber driver (black collar) by night (grey-and-black; plus-green too, if sustainably fuelled). For any given collar and work role, we further envisage that one will be primary. In the case of truck driving, for example, the means of powering the truck (diesel or hydrogen) will be secondary to its transportation role.
In addition, one collar may also hold different livelihood activities, e.g., a crofter or cocky who fishes and farms: or a farmer and bush fallower (Brown, in both cases). Thus, Figure 1 is flexibly inclusive of diverse work elements that may be combined, or braided together, in this case to constitute livelihood activities that are, on balance for that person, sustainable. Some may be more decent than others, for example, working night shifts to support study or creative work. Such flexibility in designation is vital to reflect the reality that many people thread their own personal (and household) livelihoods today from more than one strand. In the same way, ancient farmers would plant multiple varieties of seed at the same time, so that if one crop failed, another would still survive. In this way, whilst someone has a single job or informal occupation that fully sustains, sustainability is often purchased by diversifying one’s income streams for the proverbial rainy day, also known as crisis [45]
The collars are arranged in a circle rather than being organised in any top-down or typical linear traditional limb-and-branch structure. Everyone sits at the table, and every livelihood is included. The circular, metaphorically roundtable architecture further captures livelihoods’ dynamic, human relations interconnectedness. That is, a worker who tans leather in Bangladesh, or produces fashion in South Africa, or in the UK, under indecent conditions, formal or informal, is connected through global supply chains to formal workers in retail stores where the leather or garments are sold, in air-conditioned central shopping malls. Workers are linked, through pay deals at one end that may squeeze (or benefit) pay and other work conditions at the other; just as wage sacrifices at one end of a chain, were they to be made, may not be passed on into wage benefits at the other [46]. Likewise, the collars in Figure 1 link people together through time, intergenerationally. Thus, tanning practices that heavily contaminate life- and livelihood-supporting Bangladeshi rivers today inexorably affect all water-dependent livelihood opportunities tomorrow, for the next generation, in that region (and beyond).
We can now offer a first example of how our model intersects with rankings like ISCO [30]. Initiated in 2008, the ILO Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) has a major class called ‘Elementary Occupations’, the very first exemplar for which is ‘Cleaners and Helpers.’ Under our system, such work would have more than one collar, including blue, pink, and potentially red (e.g., hospital cleaner or porter) and green (as an adjacent role, e.g., hotel cleaning which commits to green laundry practices [31].

3. Sustainable Livelihoods

For livelihood opportunities to be present for future generations, they must be sustainable as best captured in the widely regarded term, and ancient concept, not just of a livelihood but a ‘Sustainable Livelihood’, emphasis added [22]. In its most widely accepted and arguably lucid definition, “a livelihood is sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation; and which contributes net benefits to other livelihoods at the local and global levels and in the short and long term” [47] (p. 6) Hence, drug trafficking, for example (from Table 1, primary collar = gold), would not be sustainable under this definition, because of the net social and occupational harm it renders on others’ lives and livelihoods (net negative).
In the Age of the Anthropocene, where human beings are drivers of critical changes to the Earth’s biosphere [48], climate change is an existential crisis for both humanity and the planet. Temperatures and sea levels are rising through greenhouse gas emissions, air quality in cities is reducing, and up to a billion people may be displaced due to natural disasters and hazards by 2050 (ibid). Work is fundamentally embedded in the environment. How people work, what work produces, how much is produced, and where it goes after it is consumed, directly impact the ecosystem. Equally, climate change impacts how we work, what can be produced, how much is made, and where it goes after it is consumed. Climate and work are, therefore, dynamically, inseparably connected [22]

What Will Be Done: Methods

Specifically, we employed the following methodology, based on the Wheel of Work, in order to arrive ultimately at our Index (above, SL-I). We detail each step and describe the process along the way, resulting in a protocol for developing the SLI-I.

4. Performance Criteria

A growing majority of people, of all ages, are not only worrying about climate degradation, but also wanting to do something about it in their own livelihoods, and livelihood-related decisions [49,50]. Being human-centred is not just about functioning for the individual. To bring sustainable change, it needs to be scaled up, not solely across individuals but also across levels [51], including environmental and social.
We can use the Wheel of Work to derive livelihoods that can be measured and indexed in terms of sustainability. Livelihoods are measured against three, likely familiar sustainability criteria [52]. These reflect the triple bottom line of profit, people and planet: In Figure 2, based on a parsimonious abstraction from all equiivalentlyl weighted 17 SDGs, they are named as (1), Economy (e.g., wages, hours, conditions); (2) their benefit to Society; and (3) Biosphere meaning their impact on the environment, land, sea and air [53]. These three criteria are therefore content-valid domains for sustainability.
Paraphrasing P. Drucker, ‘what gets measured may also get managed.’ In this case, we suggest a management process that we believe will produce a reliable and valid measure of’ livelihoods, that in turn will enable livelihoods to be managed more effectively, ‘for’ their sustainability.
Under each collar, our protocol proposes that a diverse panel of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will identify the 10 most common/popular livelihood activities under each of the 13 collars. These can include but are not restricted to formal jobs or careers and will be identified by taking the ten most common or popular livelihoods, for example, from census data, and with the help of AI programmes whose output will be cross-checked by our human judges. This process will identify the greatest number of people, and thereby the most economic, social, and environmental impacts, under each collar, a process that has already been partly undertaken, for the pre-existing collars, through national, regional, and global censuses. With 13 collars, each with 10 common livelihoods, there will be N = 130 livelihoods to be expertly rated, and ultimately ranked, against their triple-bottom-line sustainability (Figure 3). The same collars will be used for national, regional, and international indexes. Initially, we propose regional indices for the EU, US, and NZ, where a pilot test of the protocol has already begun [31].
Boundaries between each of these livelihood activities will range in clarity-fuzziness. For example, artists, actors, graphics, and music are clearly yellow. Others, such as decorators, may be hard to define crisply in terms of collars. As in all content analytic processes, there will be some disagreements between SME judges when categorising by collar(s). We will check on these levels using standard reliability checks, including, in addition to seeking consensus ratings wherever possible via QCA (above), Fleiss’s (1971) Kappa Coefficient [56] and Krippendorf’s (2013) Alpha [57]. SMEs will also draw from the Census and other working population and sector numbers, in order to identify the 10 most common livelihood activities.
Which specific criteria would then determine each livelihood’s score on each tier?
From Figure 2, we draw upon the triple-tier ratings, which reflect all 17 of the UN SDGs, and to that extent are content valid. Beneath each tier, each of the 17 SDGs already has its own pre-existing targets and indicators. Across all 17 goals, they total 169 targets and 230 indicators [58]. Many of these, though, do not apply to livelihoods (e.g., national murder rate, under SDG 16). Such a lack of fit is not surprising, as the targets and indicators were finalised in 2016 Since then, however, the world of work as we have seen has changed (A Great Disruption, above). These targets and indicators were written not for livelihoods but instead to inform national plans for implementing and evaluating the goals.
Given these considerations—parsimony, compatibility, level of analysis, and change—it is important to ask how did SMEs (firstly four of the 23 current authors, then all 23 via shared documentation, see below) proceed to determine shared criteria for future rating (for later ranking) each of the 130 livelihood’s sustainability? The task was as follows:
Tier 1: Economy. Firstly, check for any livelihood-compatible UN targets and indicators for SDGs 8, 9, 10, and 12; then, incorporate any newer concepts about decent work, sustainable production/consumption, such as living wages, living hours, safe conditions, dignified work, and secure employment [8,30].
Tier 2: Society. Next, check for livelihood-compatible UN targets and indicators for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, and 16. This tier addresses both the wellbeing of the individual and society within the world of work. This is carried out through income inequality, upholding human rights, inclusion of local cultural values, and making practices of justice central to work [59]. The tier includes, for example, gender equality, diversity and inclusion, preservation of culture, and community development (ibid). Established measures used in practices of Corporate Social Responsibility and Supply Chain Mapping were further reviewed to ensure contemporary relevance.
Tier 3: Biosphere. After realistically reviewing UN targets and indicators for SDGs 3, 6,14,15, creating a sustainability criterion for the ecosystem included commonly accepted metrics for sustainable businesses. This included (i) climate risk relating to climate change, and resource protection; (ii) reduction of carbon and greenhouse emissions; (iii) energy improvements concerned with energy use and renewable energy sources; (iv) water reduction linked to water consumption, pollution and water quality; and (v) waste diversion [60].
Importantly for the Biosphere tier in Figure 2 [61], we consider not only the impact of work on the ecosystem but also the impact of the ecosystem on the work, including droughts and floods, which impact farming (Brown collar work in Table 1). For example, in 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle devastated the orchards of growers in Aotearoa New Zealand’s fruit-bowl Hawke’s Bay. Cyclical disasters like this one undermine the sustainability of taking up fruit farming in this region.
Four of our 23 co-author SMEs (synchronously and in-person) generated initial definitions and measurable items that captured our three criteria (economy, society, biosphere) against which to later evaluate livelihoods for sustainability. Following the above process, in an online Delphi process [62], which allows for QCA consensus online, via successive rounds of consultation (above), these definitions and items were shared with our 19 leading SMEs. Although the Delphi technique has been shown to be effective at answering complex, future-oriented questions [63], it has also been criticized in future-oriented domains for potential susceptibility to cognitive biases of framing and anchoring, desirability, and bandwagon, as forms of groupthink [64]. According to Winkler and Moser, however, these biases are mitigated by ensuring that the panel of judges is not only expert but also extremely heterogeneous and diverse, especially at the protocol stage (as in our protocol). Our panel of 23 SMEs follows standard protocol in the construction of many well-respected [21] indices. We have further worked closely with a range of professional career guidance and counseling professionals, across Australasia and the US, for instance, from the earliest conceptual stages of this project, and protocol. We have sought feedback and guidance from these groups, and potential funding bodies in government and in academia, at every stage. We have obtained their unequivocal support for the need for an index, and, in particular, for the quality and diversity of the SME team. On those wide foundations, we have thus worked on initial and successive drafts of this protocol, with feedback on mapping, definitions, standards, and indicators, until a consensus was reached on process (this text) and outcome.
The outcome (criteria) resulting from this process is presented in Table 2. This contains 10 items for each sustainability criterion (economy, society, biosphere). For each criterion in each cell in Table 2, we have provided a brief description (D) of the item; (S) a potential standard, threshold, or more general reference point (i.e., similar to an ISO monitoring system) for sustainability (ibid); and (I) an indicator of whether the livelihood has met that standard. The threshold for the livelihood is not necessarily derived from the standard (S) we suggested for each item. We simply used an example of a standard to guide panellist SME thinking. It may be that, depending on the local or regional context, specific standards will be used, whilst in other contexts it may be more appropriate to use a generic or global standard. The precise standards used will be determined by the SMEs when developing an SL-I for their own context/region. At the time of the initial submission of this paper, that process had yet to happen. Since then, at the time of this revision, a pilot test of the index process above has been implemented in New Zealand (just below; fuller implementation, based on the pilot test, is planned for mid-2026).
Table 2 offers another opportunity to illustrate how this model intersects with and is scaffolded by existing classification schemes. For instance, signs such as “Livelihoods that work to increase food security” (Table 2) or “Livelihoods that are oriented around civil engagement” (Table 2) are challenging to quantify and consistently evaluate across a spectrum of occupations. Allowing us to present more specific, actionable, and ideally, evidence-based metrics to ensure the index can be applied with reliability, schemes like ISCO can be used to identify examples of such signs. Food production can be found in ISCO, under Skilled Agricultural and Fishery Workers (Major Group 6), as well as under Elementary Occupations (Group 8), such as Crop Farm Laborers (ISCO 08 Code 9211), with Definitions for each role [30]. In a similar vein, civil engagement roles may be partly subsumed under volunteer work. Volunteer activities are included under the broad category of Own-use production, along with jobs in unpaid trainee work (ibid).

5. What Will Be Tested: Pilot

Standardising (and, where necessary, streamlining these operationalized standards and indicators for the three sustainability criteria strives for consistency across SME’s. Separate panels are formed for each of the three sustainability criteria (based on specific expertise). This gives us three sets of 10 indicators, which is the normative maximum for index construction [65,66]. Each of the three SME Panels will use the same 3-point inventory scale to score the 3 × 10 items above, as follows: If the livelihood adds to sustainability, it receives a +1; sustainability neutral is given a 0; and subtracting from sustainability, it is −1.
For example, the last item in the table above (bottom right cell), a livelihood which is AI-replaceable (“Replaces some incumbents” in Table 2), would score −1, unaffected by AI would receive zero (“irrelevant to job now and for the foreseeable future”), and AI-enhanced (“reduces workloads by aiding incumbents”) would be scored +1. These scores will be checked for psychometric consistency across panellists, with a protocol in place to resolve discrepancies (ibid, QCA, Kappa, and Krippendorf). In the event that agreement cannot be reached and where the proposed Indicator in Table 2 already has a published, quality-controlled score (e.g., ISO), these may as a backup process be converted to a z-score (−3 to +3), and transformed to between −1 and +1, This may be necessary because existing measures do not always use the same measurement scale.
Inventories conventionally use binary scaling, which, when equally weighted, like the SDGs and the triple bottom line, are summed. These scales and measures comprise from them, can be factor analysed and checked for reliability, including internal consistency, as well as other checks on the reliability of scaling, such as a Thurstone procedure (with Kappa, for example).
The three sustainability dimensions would be equally weighted [65,67]. This is also in keeping with weightings given to the SDGs and the tiers in the UN SDGs Wedding Cake (Figure 2) [68]. Each of the 130 livelihoods is given a consensus rating out of 10 for each of the three sustainability tiers in Figure 2, giving a total score out of 30 for each livelihood. This rating score will subsequently be converted to a ranking for livelihood sustainability, from 1 to 130.
Summing up, each livelihood will receive a standardised score for each of the economic, social, and biosphere criteria (from Figure 2). Adding these three equally weighted scores together will give us an overall sustainability score and then an indexed rank for each livelihood. This will result in a list of 130 livelihoods ranked from most to least sustainable. As regions have their own labour-market characteristics, including generational differences [69], the SL-I will be developed as a set of context-sensitive (i.e., to US, EU, African, Asian, or South Pacific labour markets) indices.
Ranking the types of livelihoods from most to least sustainable enables a comparison, at the group level, of livelihoods against each other, for example, a truck driver against a Social Influencer. At the livelihood level, all truck drivers and social influencers are treated as groups. However, this index also allows for the application of a more granular focus that captures any wide within-group heterogeneity, e.g., subtypes of Social Influencer livelihood (Yellow collar).
To drill down, a more fine-grained ranking can be applied. For example, a social influencer’s livelihood, which also commodifies women as chattels (yellow and orange), may be rated against Social Influencers that commodify environmental sustainability (yellow and green) to make within-group distinctions. This overtly nuanced subtyping process would entail adding mean point values together from the three criteria for sustainable livelihoods for each collar to identify a rank order of Social Influencers.
Because livelihoods are aspirational as well as actual choices, including ‘wildcard’ livelihoods in addition to the 10 most common livelihoods per region might be useful. These would be wildcards in the sense that whilst not common in actual livelihoods, they are nonetheless popularly aspired to. A movie actor might be one such aspirational livelihood, for example. By including such ‘change the world’ livelihoods, which may be statistically hard to achieve, we can allow for a comparison of actual with aspirational livelihoods, without affecting the structural and psychometric integrity of the Index. We will simply have a few additional livelihoods ranked, over and above 130. One way of deriving these wildcard livelihoods is to run a global or regional poll on which one (s) to include. We can also use the SL-I to evaluate proposed livelihoods that do not yet exist but are likely to exist soon, for example, deep-sea mining.
A more extensive pilot study involving a larger and more diverse group of evaluators, a clear protocol for resolving discrepancies, and a thorough analysis of the index’s psychometric attributes is critical before any claims regarding its practical utility can be substantiated. In that respect, we will run a fuller test run of the protocol in the EU in 2026.

6. What May Be Developed: New Theory

Indexes are important mechanisms for incentivization [70]. Work seekers, responsible employers, workforce counsellors, and developers would theoretically be incentivised to invest in sustainable forms of livelihood activity. School and career counsellors, and the students they serve, would use the index to help guide vocational decisions, thereby reinforcing good actors at the top. Meanwhile, at another level, an index would be incentivising organisations, sectors, and employers whose livelihoods are nearer the bottom, to raise their ranking by boosting their CSR and ESG performance [71]. In Humanitarian Work Psychology, such an index, centred in human terms, would exemplify the new diplomacies of both standard-setting and whistleblowing [21].
Viewed through the Theoretical lens of Humanitarian Work Psychology, standard setting is a ‘new diplomacy,’ a means of persuading people to change for the greater good (ibid). Living wages, for example, are a form of standard, although these are still struggling to gain traction with some employers and employment associations [72]. Indexing may be a more persuasive form of standard-setting, with the potential to change work-related behaviour on a wider scale [73]. The key mechanism for such change is its capacity to motivate, specifically incentivize behaviour (Figure 3).
Whether or not the indexes that are developed do actually have an incentivizing effect, at micro, mid, and/or macro levels, remains to be determined. In that regard, we do see monitoring and evaluation [21] to be an essential component of the whole process. In particular, such monitoring and evaluation must include assessments of the extent to which, if any, the index is felt to be useful, by end-users at all three levels, in aiding them to promote, and invest in, whether personally, organizationally, or governmentally, Just Transitions, from less to more sustainable forms of livelihood that serve Humanity, and our collective sustainability.
In systems thinking, Success to the Successful is a dynamic whereby “activities compete for limited support or resources” [55] (p. 385). These could be livelihoods, for example. Then, “the more successful one becomes, the more support it gains, thereby starving the other” (ibid). One example of this dynamic is the UN Human Development Index (HDI) [71] According to MacLachlan et al., despite all good intentions, from a human behaviour perspective, the HDI may actually demotivate investors and skilled workers from investing in lower-ranking economies and markets, due to the high risks that the HDI by its very nature conveys (‘starving the other, ‘above) (ibid). Conversely, the HDI will work best for those at the top of the HDI, who will be seen as the safest bet and attract most of the investment and talent (‘the more support it gains’). These countries will thereby continue to dominate the hierarchy, at the expense of the countries which the index was designed to aid. From Figure 1, the net result is a self-perpetuating system’s dynamic, success-to-the-successful (ibid).
In this case, an Index has the behavioural potential to motivate multiple levels of the system [51], from individual work-seekers to government departments, to change their individual and organisational behaviour for a greater good—in this case, sustainability. At the bottom of the index, we may see the atrophying of unsustainable livelihoods. In the middle and nearer the top, however, there may be a general incentivisation of more sustainable practices, driven by competition (Figure 3). We see this, for example, in rankings of university organisations in Higher Education. The idea of systems dynamics itself obliges us to ask, therefore, why not more generally?
In that respect, the SDGs themselves, and their ethos of sustainability in particular, become an overarching, superordinate goal. In advising how to manage such dynamics, the advice has been to “look for the overarching goal for balanced achievement of…choices” in order to create a healthy competition [55] (p. 385). Superordinate goals in general, and multiple such goals in particular, have been shown to be viable ways of bringing out mutually beneficial group behaviour, avoiding dysfunctional conflict, and thereby averting a tragedy of the commons [63]. The Index we have proposed foregrounds workers, present and future. In so doing, it may help to counteract the growing ESG backlash, which some have argued is partly being fuelled by the fact that, to date, conversations about ESG have largely excluded employees and labour in general [74].

7. Levels

Individual: Conventional assessments frequently use the concept of it between individual characteristics and work role, when assessing career potential and providing career guidance [75]. Rather than focusing on individual characteristics and their fit with the surrounding work roles, which subsumes humanity to the system, our approach asks, ‘what kind of offer does the livelihood make to people, in terms of its sustainability compared to other options’?’ This is a completely different question to the concept-of-fit, which would suggest the development of a new kind of vocational test, which will indicate what collar has the best fit with the person’s own aspirations, more in line with the more human-centred aspects of the sustainable development goals [22]
Organisational: Green human resource management is a field of HRM which focuses on workplace practices that can render businesses and other forms of organisation sustainable [76]. Organisations may also be interested in where their predominant livelihood falls on the index, and what ROIs (Returns On Investment) may follow from investing in climbing its rungs. Meanwhile, green collar work itself is serving as a pilot test for developing a mini-index in New Zealand.
Societal: Governments and multilateral agencies may use the index to order funding commitments to training, vocational development, as well as fiscal support of livelihoods, which are most sustainable. Governments and multilateral agencies may also wish to commission and support future research on the societal and cultural benefits of the Index, both at a general level and in terms of the three sustainability criteria (Index scores). These may answer important questions on the motivations of key stakeholders, from individual to organisational, to change, and what impact do those changes have on society and culture?

8. Conclusions

The world of work has fundamentally changed and will continue to change in radical ways. Yet existing classification systems simply do not reflect the diverse realities of how people today do, and tomorrow will, make their livelihoods, and which will be sustainable. The urgency of climate change is upon us. Work impacts the climate, and the climate impacts work. This is a sustainable livelihoods dialectic. Climate change migration is shaping political and societal shifts, which are becoming increasingly nationalistic and protectionist. Who can work and where are fast becoming questions of social inclusion and exclusion.
The unsustainability of our current models of production and consumption is causing untold suffering and destruction through the types of work that are created. Digitalization and technology are fast changing the nature of work, including creating possible newer barriers such as the digital divide between and across societies [77] and whether it is humans or machines that do this work. The world of work) is facing the prospect of widespread unemployment and increasing precarity through the fast-accelerating wealth inequalities and unequal distribution. We agree with the ILO that the world needs new ways of both understanding and promoting decent work that are additionally protective of people and the planet [12]
The Wheel of Work, the Sustainability Criteria, and their combination into a functional classification of sustainable livelihoods, the SL-I, is a step in that direction. It identifies the most common livelihoods in relation to key decent work issues such as gender equality, pay parity, and safe conditions at work, and stratifies them according to the climate crisis and protection of our planet, in ways that are socially and culturally beneficial. In summary, we have offered a nascent calibration of, and a visible hand to guide people, organisations, and governments toward, sustainable livelihoods. Ultimately, we would like to see Sustainable Livelihoods become a new goal in the next round of post-2030 Human Development Goals.

Author Contributions

Conceptualisaton, Writing: S.C., V.H., I.M. (Ingo Matuschek), D.B. (Denise Blake), Conceptualistion; Writing—Orignal Draft Preparation: S.B. Conceptualisation; Writing Revisions, M.S.; J.M. Conceptualistion; I.M. (Ines Meyers), A.D.F., J.S. (John Scott), R.S. (Raymond Saner), L.S.-Y., G.M., S.G.A., W.R., J.S. (Jeffrey Saltzman), I.M.-H., C.T., R.S. (Rosalind Searle), D.B. (David Blustein), I.K.C., J.G., J.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

Thank you to the School of Psychology and College of Humanities & Social Sciences for supporting this research.

Data Availability Statement

Although this paper does not contain data, we fully support the sharing of data that may be derived later from our protocol in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the input of a range of colleagues from career and vocational counselling, CICA (Career Industry Council of Australia), and CDANZ (Career Development Association of New Zealand). We thank the School of Psychology and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University of New Zealand, for supporting opportunities to develop this project at SIOP (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) and EAWOP (European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology). Thank you to Director Freedom-Kai of the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress for your feedback on some of the ideas in this paper. We would like to thank our peer reviewers for their kind and insightful feedback, which has improved this paper significantly, and is included verbatim in places in the text. We would like to acknowledge Project SLATE (Sustainable Livelihoods And The Ecosystem as the catalyst for the Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihood Index (SL-I).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. The Wheel of Work. Acknowledgement: Dr. Minh Hieu Nguyen.
Figure 1. The Wheel of Work. Acknowledgement: Dr. Minh Hieu Nguyen.
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Figure 2. The UN SDG wedding cake. Source: [54], with permission).
Figure 2. The UN SDG wedding cake. Source: [54], with permission).
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Figure 3. Success to the successful. Source: [55].
Figure 3. Success to the successful. Source: [55].
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Table 1. Wheel of work: Collar exemplars.
Table 1. Wheel of work: Collar exemplars.
Collar ColourCollar NameInformal ExampleFormal Example
GreySKILLED TRADESBitcoin MinerComputer Programmer
PinkSERVICE CAREMigrant MaidRetail Assistant
RedPUBLIC SERVICEAuxiliary aid workerFirefighter
GreenGREEN WORKClimate ActivistSustainability Analyst
KhakiARMED FORCESParamilitariesNational Militaries
YellowCREATIVE ARTSSocial InfluencerGraphic Designer
BrownEXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIESBush FallowerOrchardist
BlackTRANSPORT SERVICESTaxi Driver Truck Driver
SilverROBOTIC AIBotRobotic Engineer
GoldELITE PROFESSIONALDrug Cartel BossProfessional athlete
OrangeUNFREE WORKChild MinerPrison Labour
WhiteCLERICAL ADMINSocial EntrepreneurCustomer Service Representative
BlueMANUFACTURING PRODUCTIONLabourerFactory Hand
Table 2. Criteria for sustainable livelihoods.
Table 2. Criteria for sustainable livelihoods.
EnvironmentalSocialEconomic
(D) Low Carbon footprint
Greenhouse gas emissions in tons
(S) Relevant global and/or context-specific measurement of low carbon emission (e.g., ISO Standard, https://www.iso.org/home.html, accessed on 1 May 2025
(I) A Livelihood estimate of carbon footprint—(e.g., the carbon footprint of diesel truck driving- The Carbon Footprint of Trucking (visualcapitalist.com)		(D) Tackles Poverty in Society
Reduces material hardship and insecurity
(S) Global benchmarks for reducing poverty and inequality (e.g., The World Development Indicators https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators, accessed on 1 May 2025
(I) Livelihoods that work to increase food security and access to healthcare, increase education, decent housing, energy access, promote greater employment prospects, strengthen communities, reduce crime, and other prosocial work-related activities to benefit others (see Prosocial Work Psychology
(https://search.app/CfL39WHVdmgQ7GtY9, accessed on 1 May 2025)		(D) Delivers a Living wage (rate)
Based on evidence and according to context
(S) Project GLOW estimate, plus relevant national or regional living wage campaign figure (https://projectglow.net/; Living Wage Foundation Estimate livingwage.org.uk, accessed on 1 May 2025
(I) The median wage for the livelihood
(D) High Resource efficiency
Sustainably uses both limited and non-renewable resources.
(S) Levels of reducing, reusing, and recycling (ISO and other standards)
(I) Livelihood estimate of efficiency (e.g., ORE ft in manufacturing
(https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJPPM-11-2017-0282/full/html, accessed on 1 May 2025)		Promotes Equality and Equal Opportunity
Access to opportunities and just rewards for all
(S) Fosters social mobility (i.e., through pillars of health, education, technology, work, and institutions (Global Social Mobility Report 2020 https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-social-mobility-index-2020-why-economies-benefit-from-fixing-inequality/, accessed on 1 May 2025; see SDG 10 (empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion for all).
(I) Livelihoods that enable social mobility and/ or fight for equality and equal opportunities, e.g., for livelihoods such as Teachers, Probation Officers, and Social Workers.		(D)Provides Living hours
Based on evidence and according to the context, the evidence
(S) Living Wage Foundation (https://search.app/5QDtQA2bS1wvnBuU6, accessed on 1 May 2025
(I) the median hours for the livelihood
(D) Regenerative/cyclical on waste
Recycling and other circular practices
(S) Livelihood sector’s ISO (e.g., ISO 5020 for fishing vessels)
(I) Weight, volume, and type of waste for that livelihood’s work		(D) Enables civic contributions.
Contributes to public good(s)
(S) level of participation in community service, supporting healthy political systems, and solving societal issues. Civic Standards (https://search.app/CP8MfBQPczX3eB7t8, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Livelihoods that are oriented around civil engagement, such as youth engagement, social entrepreneurship, and park managers (https://search.app/ZzCWZutr7mmDuZC47, accessed on 1 March 2025 		(D) Provides Work Safety
According to the UN ILO Conventions
(S) ILO Standards on Occupational Safety and Health (conventions and recommendations)
(https://www.ilo.org/publications/ilo-guide-international-labour-standards-occupational-safety-and-health, accessed on 1 March 2025
(I) Livelihood ranking on Health and Safety measures specific to the region (e.g., https://search.app/5uvS6feLinR6VQht7, accessed on 1 March 2025
(D) Is Energy efficient.
Optimises energy consumption.
(S) ISO 50001
(I) Energy produced/energy consumed ×100 (in tons)		(D) Considers the local community.
Mindful of preexisting local interests and practices
(S) OECD recommendation on the policy coherence of sustainable development
(https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-5021, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Livelihoods that are created through work cultures and practices which are aligned to and appropriate to customs and needs in the surrounding community, that rest on local cultural values and structures		(D) Provides Legal protection.
Official protections of rights and freedom, including the right to organise and collectively bargain
(S) Relevant legislation, regulations, and union protection
(I) livelihoods that are protected by law and the level of access to that protection
(D) Protects biodiversity.
Flora and fauna
(S) ISO/TC (Technical Committee) 331 (https://www.iso.org/committee/8030847.html, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) relevant livelihood sector score (e.g., volume of forest inventory, ratio of growth-to-removals [GRR]), from the Forest Stewardship Council [FSC])		(D) Promotes DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)
Freedom from prejudice and discrimination
(S) The Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB) (https://dileaders.com/gdeib/ The Global Compact https://unglobalcompact.org, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Livelihoods that promote the fair treatment, dignity, and full participation of all people at work. DEI Officers, HRM roles (DEI Career Centre-Search DEI Jobs and Explore DEI Career Resources)		(D) Delivers Work Justice
Distributive, Procedural, Interactive, Informational, Deontic
(S) Work Justice Taxonomies (e.g., J. Lefkowitz, 2023, Values and Ethics of Industrial-Organisational Psychology; and https://search.app/UNsGtkqbkpYGo85C9, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) The levels of all forms of work justice found in the livelihood in context
(D) Safeguards water (salt and fresh)
Access to, efficient use, and protection of clean water
(S) Standards of Fresh Water Security (e.g., WASH
https://search.app/AbeFWDQ9cyVGfSoS8, accessed on 1 May 2025)
Standards for Salt Water (e.g., temperature, acidity, dissolved solids/conductance, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, hardness/ suspended sediments
https://search.app/DfKKKmX2iQsX3JiX8, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) relevant livelihood sector score for maritime protections (acidification levels, pollution levels, and reduction in fish stocks, SDG 14)		Protects (future) Generations.
No disadvantage for people not yet born
(S) Global standards in Social Responsibility IS 26000 (https://www.iso.org/standard/42546.html, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Livelihoods that are centred/specialising in social responsibility and/or sustainability, e.g., ethical procurement, CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer)		(D) Allows Work Flexibility
Autonomy about workplace workload, when and how to execute work
(S) Work–Life Balance (e.g., OECD Better Life Index (https://search.app/7oRKG3Na5Q3bPwLe7, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Score of work–life balance for livelihood
(D) Safeguards land (incl. seabed)
Creates and conserves healthy terrestrial environments
(S) SDG 15-forest protection, biodiversity, and land conservation (e.g., post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework
https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-brief/post-2020-global-biodiversity-framework, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) relevant livelihood sector for protection of natural ecosystems (e.g., mountains, green spaces, seascapes) from degradation. The protection of Mother Earth		(D) Respects Cultures
Encourages/Allows for the expression of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures
(S) Cultural Competency Standards (e.g., WHO Global Competency Standards
(https://www.who.int/news/item/16-12-2021-new-who-global-competency-standards-aim-to-strengthen-the-health-workforce-and-support-provision-of-quality-health-services-to-refugees-and-migrants, accessed on 1 March 2025) and/or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(https://www.ohchr.org/en/indigenous-peoples/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Specific cultural competence standards for livelihood in context 		(D) Is Salutogenic (promotes Wellbeing)
Physical and mental, according to WHO
(S) Healthy Workplaces (e.g.,
https://search.app/v7jGpbNBbbqn1w3T7, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) livelihoods in which health tends to be promoted and protected (e.g., through policy, access to services, material work conditions, etc.)
(D) Safeguards air
Creates and conserves healthy air quality
(S) Air quality guidelines (e.g., WHO Air Quality Guidelines 2021
https://search.app/wQRisPGgeYH9oY117, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) relevant livelihood sector score for air quality protections (e.g., PM10 https://search.app/5CU1eu93Leu4U19eA, accessed on 1 March 2025)		(D) Respects (Universal) Human Rights
(S)The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948)
(I) The local instantiation of the Declaration for livelihood in context		(D) Is Durable (has longevity, context-specific)
Offers stability and predictability
(S) Relative permanence of work, both type and activity (i.e., tenure, amount of work, and nature of the work). Relevant contracts and/or agreements
(I) Livelihoods that have some form of temporal protection and predictability
(D) Takes Climate Action directly
Work itself combats climate change and its impacts
(S) Paris Declaration 1.5 Degrees
(I) Livelihood contribution to global warming		(D) Delivers Quality of Life (for Others)
(S)UN WHO Quality of Life (WHOQOL). The 4 domains of QOL are physical health, psychological, social relationships, and environment (https://search.app/Vzuv15hKEaSeGzJj8, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) Livelihoods that are focused on 4 domains of life (e.g., doctor/nurse, psychologist, public relations, urban planner)		(D) Delivers Quality of Life (for Self)
According to UN WHO guidelines
(S) WHOQOL: Measuring Quality of Life
(https://search.app/aEfgPibp9w1BkLfa8, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) livelihoods which enhance physical and mental health, social relationships, people’s environments, including digital connectedness
(D) Resilient to climate disasters
Work is unaffected by climate change
(S) Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30 https://search.app/j1yHqgsnJkNgHpBA6, accessed on 1 March 2025
(I) Livelihood assessment against the Sendai Framework Monitor
https://search.app/bkA2Kn6e5gkthnV76, accessed on 1 March 2025		(D) Is Techno-socially Responsible
Responsible and ethical use of technology and technological devices
(S) Global and Regional Standards for Technology usage (e.g., World Bank ID4D Technology Standards (https://id4d.worldbank.org/guide/technology-standards, accessed on 1 March 2025 or UN Tech Responsible Playbook https://search.app/EtchEU6DcRAB9MCj8, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) The extent to which the livelihood in context meets tech responsible standards		(D) Is AI replaceable/neutral/enhanced
The role of AI at work
(S) Jobs of Tomorrow White Paper, World Economic Forum (https://search.app/YnvYSxw3wfUfkWo18, accessed on 1 March 2025)
(I) the impacts/exposure to risk that AI has on the relevant livelihood-in-context
“Fully replaces some incumbents” (workers in the role) versus “Reduces workloads by aiding incumbents” versus “Irrelevant to job in foreseeable future”
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Carr, S.; Hopner, V.; Meyer, I.; Di Fabio, A.; Scott, J.; Matuschek, I.; Blake, D.; Saxena, M.; Saner, R.; Saner-Yiu, L.; et al. The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I). Sustainability 2025, 17, 6295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146295

AMA Style

Carr S, Hopner V, Meyer I, Di Fabio A, Scott J, Matuschek I, Blake D, Saxena M, Saner R, Saner-Yiu L, et al. The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I). Sustainability. 2025; 17(14):6295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146295

Chicago/Turabian Style

Carr, Stuart, Veronica Hopner, Ines Meyer, Annamaria Di Fabio, John Scott, Ingo Matuschek, Denise Blake, Mahima Saxena, Raymond Saner, Lichia Saner-Yiu, and et al. 2025. "The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I)" Sustainability 17, no. 14: 6295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146295

APA Style

Carr, S., Hopner, V., Meyer, I., Di Fabio, A., Scott, J., Matuschek, I., Blake, D., Saxena, M., Saner, R., Saner-Yiu, L., Massola, G., Atkins, S. G., Reichman, W., Saltzman, J., McWha-Hermann, I., Tchagneno, C., Searle, R., Mukerjee, J., Blustein, D., ... Haar, J. (2025). The Wheel of Work and the Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I). Sustainability, 17(14), 6295. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17146295

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