Bullshit job

A bullshit job or pseudowork is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. The concept was coined by anthropologist David Graeber in a 2013 essay in Strike Magazine, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, and elaborated upon in his 2018 book Bullshit Jobs.

Graeber also formulated the concept of bullshitization, where previously meaningful work turns into a bullshit job through corporatization, marketization or managerialism. This has been applied to academia, which Graeber and others contend has been bullshitized by the expansion of managerial roles and administrative work caused by neoliberal educational reforms, contributing to the erosion of academic freedom.

Examples

Graeber gives these examples of jobs he considers "completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious":

A doorman or receptionist who has little to do in practice, but who was hired as a status symbol
Public relations promoting organizations that are already well-known and well-liked
Customer service people, if the main job is to apologize for problems that should not happen, and the manager uses the customer service staff as a way to avoid solving the underlying problem
People involved in unnecessary paperwork, such as creating a report that no one reads or relies on
Managers whose employees need no managerial assistance, or who invent and assign busy work

Perceived value

Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in 2015, indicated that around 40% of workers did not believe that their job made a meaningful contribution to the world.