What is our Position on Pointless Jobs?

12/06/2024

Dr Ann Villiers is a career coach and advocate for increasing the accuracy of skills language. Ann is a Life Member of CDAA.

David Graeber’s 2018 book, Bullsh*t Jobs, the rise of pointless work and what we can do about it, might give you a chuckle (particularly if you’ve worked in higher education), but may also prompt thought and concern. He postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyses their social harm.

What is a BS job? Here’s Graeber’s definition: ‘a bullshit job is 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’. 

These jobs, though pointless, often pay quite well and tend to offer excellent working conditions. And, to be clear, BS jobs are distinguished from shit jobs, which involve work that needs to be done and which benefits society, but is both paid badly and treated poorly.

Based on his analysis, Graeber concludes that at least half of all work being done in our society could be eliminated without making any real difference at all. He also points out that: ‘Bullshit jobs regularly induce feelings of hopelessness, depression, and self-loathing. They are forms of spirtual violence directed at the essence of what it means to be a human being’. 

Given the number and impact of BS jobs, Graeber’s analysis has implications for career development advocacy and practice. Specifically, where’s the profession’s voice on questioning the proliferation of BS jobs, and what are the implications for working with clients in, escaping, or considering bullshit jobs?

Bullshit jobs and advocacy

We often hear that a new policy or project will create more jobs, but no one asks that those jobs should serve some useful purpose and receive a decent wage. So:

  • What is the profession’s position on the proliferation of pointless jobs and the low pay given to essential workers?
  • When governments issue estimates of projects’ job creation possibilities, who advocates for an analysis to confirm these jobs are worth creating?
  • What evaluation is done post-project to assess what calibre of jobs was created?

Bullshit jobs and career development practice

According to Graeber, students learn lessons from the make-work jobs they perform while studying, including how to pretend to work even when nothing needs to be done, and that one is paid money to do things that are in no way useful or important and that one does not enjoy. Are these lessons valuable for students’ work-readiness and employability?

Part of career development practice is to explore career motivations and goals. Clients may seek a career that makes a positive contribution to the world. But, as Graeber points out, the more your work helps and benefits others, the less you are likely to be paid. We discovered during the pandemic who the really essential workers were. And this group did not include those Graeber sees as bullshit jobs such as hedge fund managers, political consultants, marketing gurus, lobbysists, and corporate lawyers.

The concept of work’s social value doesn’t receive much attention. But as I explored in my article about the problematic language of the care economy, those who have analysed work’s social value find an inverse relationship between usefulness and pay. And caution is needed in judging usefulness. For example, Graeber points out that the majority of improvement in longevity since 1900 is really due to hygience, nutrition, and other public health improvements, not medical treatment. Nurses and hospital cleaners are more responsible for positive health outcomes than very highly paid physicians.

Even if you don’t entirely agree with his analysis, Graeber’s work on BS jobs does raise some career choice questions. When working with clients:

  • How do we assess if a job is pointless?
  • Should we be fostering clients’ critical consciousness about BS jobs?
  • How do we help a client wishing to escape a pointless job?
  • What are the ethics around considering BS jobs?
  • Is taking a BS job better than no job?

There is plenty of online advice about finding purpose and meaning in life. But perhaps it’s only career professionals who have stopped to consider the moral questions raised by well paid but pointless work.