Much of our social and material fabric rests on the work that we do, whether paid or not, so it is not surprising that work has been of central interest to sociology. This chapter examines the relationship between work and non-work and the variety of experiences associated with both. It tries to help students to understand how the nature of work changed in the shift from pre-modern to modern societies, and the pivotal role played by industrial capitalism in this process. In pre-modern times, social activity was much less clearly demarcated into periods of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’, and the physical location of work in a separate domain was largely absent. Industrial capitalism transformed the definition of work and the experience of the worker, while at the same time recasting people as consumers of leisure. The chapter returns time and again to the question of how the experience of work and non-work in modernity is mediated by age, race and ethnicity, and, especially, by gender.