While some citizens doubtless enjoy their careers, it's unlikely that work pleases everyone. The positive, cheerful tone that is adopted by More when talking about work is designed to encourage and glamorize the work being done in his society, in contrast to the reality of his time, in which common people did difficult, unpleasant work for long hours. Both utopic books suggest that work is vastly preferable to idleness. 
The lack of work in the England of More's time is addressed within Utopia. In that society, every person has a job, and can even chose their craft. In addition, everyone works equally short hours, and all people are rotated from the city to the farmland in order to divide the difficult labor. This is in contrast to England of the time, in which the common people's work was extremely difficult, but the rich rarely worked at all. More's vision of an egalitarian society, where all people worked and all are satisfied with their work, is a reaction to the idleness (whether due to laziness or unemployment) which he saw plaguing England.
In Pines, work is viewed as a path to civilization. Neville glorifies the work that the narrators of the story, sailors who find the Isle, do for the idle islanders. 
Compared to the grandeur of contemporary European palaces, this shack is so poorly built it is almost foolish. 
By showing the islanders' awe over the marks of civilization that the sailors bring, Neville emphasizes that the islanders themselves are uncivilized and inferior to those who possess the knowledge and ability to build and do work. 
Again, the fact that the sailors can create something through work, instead of simply existing like the islanders do, makes them much more admirable to the islanders. This glorification of the work that the sailors do reinforces the idea that work and civilization are closely joined, and that the only humans that don't do work are uncivilized ones, like the islanders.
Throughout The Isle of Pines and Utopia, positive references to work and negative references to laziness build an overall condemnation of idleness in society. This philosophy is in alignment with the contemporary view that idleness breeds societal problems, while work is encouraged and glorified. However, both More and Neville also reacted to societal problems of the day, drawing attention to a lack of economic equality and the degradation of morality through idleness. Through the study of just one issue, we’ve seen how utopic authors can simultaneously support, react against, and offer alternatives to the problems that they address in their utopias.
