Bullshit Jobs: A Conversation with David Graeber

Abstract

Is your job a pointless job? Does it make a meaningful contribution to the world? If your job was eliminated, would it matter to anyone? These are some of the questions that David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, examines in his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Simon & Schuster 2019). It has been estimated that across the developed world up to 40 percent of workers-especially those in administration, finance, and the legal professions-saw their jobs as a form of meaningless toil analogous to the Greek myth of Sisyphus. These white-collar workers covertly think that their jobs are not only useless, but sometimes harmful to society. With increased automation, a fifteen-hour workweek is not unachievable, but on average working hours have increased rather than decreased over the past few decades. In this book, Graeber examines this epidemic of futility, and offers a theory for human freedom and social liberation.

My Job and Its Requirements

“…contractual and financial reasons to do what your job requires. 'Bullshit jobs' is the coinage of Graeber (2018). I thank an editor for asking me to think about them.…”

Income Inequalities in Capitalistic and Socialistic Economies: “An empirical evidence from capitalistic and socialistic countries

“…The researcher examines the panel data and used dynamic movement techniques to estimate the results. It is worth highlighting here that people have less chance of getting involved in the labor market particularly when it comes to dealing with a cross country culture which further gives them a feeling of inconvenience (Graeber, 2018 &Soffia, Wood, andBurchell, 2021). McNally (2019) elucidates that some economists endorse several policies under the umbrella of Socialism which lowers the gravity of income inequality.…”

The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work, by JanEeckhout (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2021), ix pp., 327 pp.

“…At the same time, the book is thought‐provoking. For example, I keep thinking about whether the rise of dominant firms may also have contributed to the so‐called bullshit jobs in large organisations, which Graeber (2018) refers to as pointless jobs that even the workers realise their meaninglessness but pretend otherwise, such as those box‐ticking jobs in corporate bureaucracies.…”