Bullshit Jobs

A hard day's work is its own reward. Unless it's BS.

Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

We are told to work hard, put in the hours and we will be rewarded with a good life. Getting and keeping a good job is what we should strive for.

What if that’s not true?

For starters, let’s take a look at the economic fortunes of the American middle class over the past thirty years because it is instructive to this story.

Income and wealth inequality is at historically high levels in the United States. A 2022 report by the Congressional Budget Office painted a stark picture of the state of inequality in the United States. The report looked at the change in wealth distribution in the United States from 1989 through 2019 – thirty years. The report found that the share of total wealth held by families in the top 10 percent of the distribution increased from 63 percent in 1989 to 72 percent in 2019, and the share of total wealth held by families in the top 1 percent of the distribution increased from 27 percent to 34 percent over the same period. By contrast, the share of total wealth held by families in the bottom half of the distribution declined over that period, from 4 percent to 2 percent.

Source: Congressional Budget Office 2022

The United States isn’t the only society with an income inequality problem, but it is high on the list, and it is the one I’m most familiar with, as I live there. You can argue that such income inequality isn’t a problem, but I’m taking the other side of that argument here. When over a third of the wealth of a country belongs to the 1%, power is concentrated in that 1%, and the government becomes captured by that 1%.

Markets and economies become less efficient as the business of that nation focuses more on protecting current power structures rather than serving the majority of its citizens. The people in such a country cease to believe “we are all in this together,” because they can see with their own eyes, that this isn’t the case.

It’s good work if you can get it.

Now let’s look at the nature of work. There is a decent chance that the job you have had in the past, or the job you are supposed to be doing now while you are reading this – is a bullshit job.

The phrase “bullshit jobs” comes from Anthropologist David Graeber’s 2018 book, Bullshit Jobs. Graeber defines a bullshit job as: 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.

Gerber argues that many jobs provide no value to society at all. bullshit jobs exist in our culture as part of the societal illusion that there is just so much to do. We have created many jobs that add a layer of superfluous bureaucracy to many aspects of our lives. Gerber argued that bullshit jobs are not only inefficient but harmful because our culture attaches self-worth to our jobs and productivity. When we know we are in a bullshit job, it does real emotional damage. In many Western societies, our self-worth is partially tied up in what we do. If we know that what we do is unnecessary and in some cases harmful, that is damaging to our sense of self.

Gerber estimates that over 20% of jobs are bullshit jobs, while an academic study on the topic (yes, there was one) estimated that the number is closer to 5%.

The 2016-2017 State of Enterprise Work Report that Gerber cites in his book shows that the amount of time office workers have to spend on their primary job duties was 39% in 2016. Seems like there is a lot of bullshit in that other 61%. I doubt these numbers have improved much in the intervening years.

It’s just science.

Economist John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that by the 21^st century, much of the world would be enjoying a 15-hour work week due to the pace of economic growth and efficiency improvements. It may be that he was right, but we don’t know, because that isn’t the reality for most of us.

That 15-hour number isn’t far off. Studies show that most people simply can’t work at a high level for more than a couple of hours a day. I’ve heard this number as low as two or three hours, but I picked a study that says 4 to 5 hours per day is our maximum for productive work.  If you take the higher number and multiply by 5, you get a twenty-five-hour work week. The rest of the time we are likely running errands, gossiping, reading blogs on the internet, getting a snack, taking a walk, or other activities that aren’t related to work.

Why does this matter?

This matters because if we had moved to a work week that physiology and psychology seem to support (4-5 hour work day) and designed work that was more in line with our natural capabilities and natural rhythms, we would be happier and more productive. Someone who works three or four days a week travels less to work so that person pollutes less. That person has more time for connecting with their families, friends, and community. They have more time to live in and connect to nature – connections that for the most part, modern life takes from us by insisting that we work forty-hour work weeks, even though we all know that we aren’t productive about half of that time.

Less time working is shown to improve health, and that ends up saving on the bottom line. If people work less, they are less stressed about work (in most cases) and have more time to engage in physical activities. A 2021 report by the World Health Organization estimated that working long hours kills around 745,000 people every year. The study found that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared to working 35-40 hours a week.

An economy based on well-being.

Middle managers unite! You know that your jobs, or part of your jobs are BS. It’s okay to say it out loud. This won’t change overnight, but it can change.

Companies, think of the cost savings. Companies would likely pay higher taxes in such a system (a universal basic income may be best to accompany such a work shift) but companies would have less overhead. If people want to work 80 weeks, let him – but not many people want to be in that club, so don’t make them join.

The unemployment rate that we periodically hear about and is reported every month is a human construction. Any good economist will tell you what the ideal level of unemployment is in an economy. Many central banks in the world have an “ideal” unemployment rate. Think about that. The way most of our economies operate now, the central bank sees it as “ideal” that a certain small proportion of their population is afraid that they can’t feed their families.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Everyone that wants to work should work. Not in some soviet style economy where people are on the dole and don’t do anything.

Imagine an economy focused on well-being instead of economic growth, where work weeks were less than 40 hours. In such an economy, a universal basic income could keep more people out of poverty. A universal job guarantee could make sure everyone who wanted to work could work. The costs of unemployment insurance would be drastically reduced if not eliminated. That job guarantee isn’t for a 40 hour a week bullshit job but could be for a 20 hour a week job that fits that workers skill and desire to work. If someone wants to work 60-hour weeks, no one will stop them, but that wouldn’t be expected to get ahead, because getting ahead to grow the company to grow the economy wouldn’t be the goal anymore.

I’ve worked in many different jobs in my life and there were times in my life where I was very happy to work 50 – 60 hours a week. Now, that isn’t the case. I also have much more expertise and am more efficient now, so that work that might have taken me 50 hours a week, I can now do in 30. I want to keep those twenty hours. Many other people would benefit from keeping them as well.

A well-being economy has as its main goal, the well-being of its citizens – you know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness type stuff. An economy focused first and foremost on economic growth, puts well-being subordinate to that growth.   

Eliminating bullshit jobs is just part of a walk on the degrowth path to a steady-state economy that serves us better than our current model. I’ll discuss things like the four-day workweek, universal basic income, and job guarantees in the coming weeks. That is unless I decide blog writing is a bullshit job.