Research shows that who you know, not hard work or luck, is the strongest predictor of success. Raj Chetty and a team analyzed 21 billion Facebook friendships from 72 million Americans to measure economic connectedness—the share of friends earning more than oneself. Children with high economic connectedness earn 20 percent more on average as adults. This gap equals growing up in a family making $47,000 a year instead of $27,000.

People near the bottom have almost no rich friends: fewer than 2 percent of their friends are in the top 10 percent of earners. Those at the top cluster heavily—34 percent of their friends come from that same top 10 percent. Network cohesion and volunteering showed no meaningful link to upward mobility.

A 1973 survey found 56 percent of men got their job through a contact they saw only occasionally. A 2022 randomized experiment on 20 million LinkedIn users confirmed that moderately weak ties create more job mobility than close ones. Hard work and luck are real but not levers you can always pull. The circle of people you know a little is a lever you can pull. Most people optimize working hard but never spend an afternoon on who they know. The data says they have it backwards.