Bullshit Jobs


Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by the American anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.
The book is an extension of Graeber's popular 2013 essay, which was later translated into 12 languages and whose underlying premise became the subject of a YouGov poll. Graeber solicited hundreds of testimonials from workers with meaningless jobs and revised his essay's case into book form; Simon & Schuster published the book in May 2018.

History

In 2013, Graeber published an essay in the radical magazine Strike! named "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs", which argued the pointlessness of many contemporary jobs, particularly those in fields of finance, law, human resources, public relations, and consultancy. It received over one million views and was subsequently translated into 12 languages.
YouGov undertook a related poll, in which 37% of surveyed Britons thought that their jobs did not contribute 'meaningfully' to the world. In opposition to Graeber's claim that "most people hate their job," the same survey also found that 63% of respondents said that their jobs were "personally fulfilling" and a 2016 Ipsos study found that 71% of Britons reported positive feelings towards their job.
Graeber subsequently solicited hundreds of job testimonials and expanded his essay into a book which includes many of those anecdotes, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.
By the end of 2018, the book was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Chinese.

Summary of claims

Graeber states that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to what he calls "bullshit jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case". However, a journalist who reviewed his book stated that Graeber's claim is inconsistent with the fact the average British worker in 2018 works only 31 hours, much less than the average for 1900 of 56 hours per week.
He believes that many people who are working these "bullshit" or pointless jobs know that they are working jobs that do not contribute to society in a meaningful way. He posits that instead of producing more jobs that are fulfilling for our environment, technology and machines create meaningless jobs to provide everyone with an opportunity to work. While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, according to Graeber, the pointlessness of the work grates at people's humanity and creates a "profound psychological violence".
Graeber states that more than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and five types of entirely pointless jobs:
  1. Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters;
  2. Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, or to prevent other goons from doing so, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists;
  3. Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code, airline desk staff who calm passengers with lost luggage;
  4. Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, academic administration;
  5. Taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.
According to Graeber, these jobs are largely in the private sector despite the idea that market competition would root out such inefficiencies. In companies, the rise of service sector jobs owes less to economic need than to "managerial feudalism", in which employers need underlings in order to feel important and maintain competitive status and power. In society, the Puritan-capitalist work ethic is to be credited for making the labor of capitalism into religious duty: that workers did not reap advances in productivity as a reduced workday because, as a societal norm, they believe that work determines their self-worth, even as they find that work pointless. This cycle is a "profound psychological violence" and "a scar across our collective soul".
Work as a source of virtue is a recent idea. In fact, work was disdained by the aristocracy in classical times but inverted as virtuous through then-radical philosophers like John Locke. The Puritan idea of virtue through suffering justified the toil of the working classes as noble. And so, one could argue that bullshit jobs justify contemporary patterns of living: that the pains of dull work are suitable justification for the ability to fulfill consumer desires, and that fulfilling those desires could be considered as the reward for suffering through pointless work in contemporary society. Accordingly, over time, the prosperity extracted from technological advances has been reinvested into industry and consumer growth for its own sake rather than the purchase of additional leisure time from work. Bullshit jobs also serve political ends, because political parties are more concerned about having jobs than whether the jobs are fulfilling and citizenry occupied with busy work have less motivation to revolt.
The solution Graeber offers is a universal basic income, which would allow people to not to need to work a "bullshit job." The common trends within society today point people towards a very uneven work cycle that consists of sprints followed by low periods of unproductive work. Jobs such as farmers, fishers, soldiers, and novelists vary the intensity of their work based on the urgency to produce and the natural cycles of productivity, not arbitrary standard working hours. Universal basic income offers the notion that this time pursuing pointless work could instead be spent pursuing creative activities.

Reception

A review in The Times praises the book's academic rigor and humor, especially in some job examples, but altogether felt that Graeber's argument was "enjoyably overstated". The reviewer found Graeber's historical work ethic argument convincing, but offered counterarguments on other points: that the average British workweek has decreased from 56 hours in 1900 to 31 hours in 2018, that Graeber's argument for the overall proportion of pointless work is overreliant on the YouGov survey, and that the same survey does not hold that "most people hate their jobs". The reviewer maintains that while "managerial feudalism" can explain the existence of flunkies, Graeber's other types of bullshit jobs owe their existence to competition, government regulation, long supply chains, and the withering of inefficient companies—the same ingredients responsible for luxuries of advanced capitalism such as smartphones and year-round produce.
An article in Philosophy Now pointed to the initial definition of "bullshit" in philosophy. In his 1986 essay, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt turned the word "bullshit" into an official philosophical term when defining bullshit as the deceptive misrepresentation of reality that remains different from lying because contrary to the liar, the "bullshitter" does not aim specifically to deceive. Along these lines, administrators attempt to establish a work culture whose achievements are not factually false, but merely fake and phony.
Andrew Anthony reviewed the book in 2018 and said: "With its snarky tone and laboured arguments, I’m not sure this is the book to ignite a larger debate. Despite its length, it doesn’t develop a theory that’s notably more sophisticated than the Strike! essay. Too much time is spent on nailing down flip typologies. According to Graeber, there are five different kinds of bullshit job, which he labels: flunkies, goons, duct-tapers, box-tickers and taskmasters. On closer inspection, they seem like arbitrary distinctions that add little to our understanding. But Graeber is clearly right when he notes that as individuals we crave something more than social acceptance – we also hanker after meaning."

Studies on Graeber's claims

A 2021 study of European Union workers empirically tested several of Graeber's claims, such as that bullshit jobs were increasing over time and that they accounted for much of the workforce. Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful. The study also found that while there was some correlation between occupation and feelings of uselessness, they did not correspond neatly with Graeber's theory; bullshit "taskmasters" and "goons" such as hedge-fund managers or lobbyists reported that they were vastly satisfied with their work, while essential workers like refuse collectors and cleaners often felt their jobs were useless. However, the study did confirm that feeling like one's job is not useful was correlated to poor psychological health and higher rates of depression and anxiety. To account for the serious observed effects of feeling like one's work is useless, the authors instead draw on the Marxist concept of alienation and suggest that toxic management and work culture may lead individuals to feel that their work is not beneficial to society.
A 2023 study of United States workers, using data from the American Working Conditions Survey, concluded that workers in occupations labelled as socially useless by Graeber were more likely to perceive their job as socially useless, after controlling for other factors. The authors suggest the discrepancy between their findings and Soffia et.al's study could be their use of regression models that control for other factors, or that Graeber's theories are more applicable to "heavily financialized Anglo-Saxon countries." They conclude that Graeber's theory by itself cannot explain people's perceptions of the social value of their work.