Bullshit Jobs: A Theory Add a review

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.

Two studies found that Graeber's claims are not supported by data: while he claims that 50% of jobs are useless, less than 20% of workers feel that way, and those who feel their jobs are useless do not correlate with whether their job is useless. (Garbage collectors, janitors, and other essential workers more often felt like their jobs were useless than people in jobs classified by Graeber as useless.) The studies found that toxic work culture and bad management were better explanations of the reasons for those feelings (as described in Marx's theory of alienation). The studies did find that the belief that one's work is useless led to lower personal wellbeing.