Bullshit job

This article is about the phenomenon. For the book, see Bullshit Jobs.

A bullshit job or pseudowork^[1] is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose.^[2] 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.^[3]

Graeber also formulated the concept of bullshitization, where previously meaningful work turns into a bullshit job through corporatization, marketization or managerialism.^[4] 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,^[5][6][7] contributing to the erosion of academic freedom.^[8]

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^[3]
• Public relations promoting organizations that are already well-known and well-liked^[3]
• 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^[3]
• People involved in unnecessary paperwork, such as creating a report that no one reads or relies on^[3]
• Managers whose employees need no managerial assistance, or who invent and assign busy work^[3]

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.^[3]

See also

• Americans with No Abilities Act – Satire about low-skill workers that was once misunderstood as a real news report
• Boondoggle – Project that continues despite its wastefulness
• Busywork – Work that creates only an illusion of valuePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Critique of work – Criticism of work as such
• Dilbert principle – idea that less-competent workers are promoted to management
• Emotional labour – Work managing feelings and expressionsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Enshittification – Systematic decline in online platform quality
• Interpassivity – Opposite of something that is interactive
• Make-work job – Non-market jobs used to reduce unemployment
• McJob – Pejorative work-related slang
• Parkinson's law – Adage that work expands to fill its available time
• Presenteeism – Pressure to work while sick
• Quaternary sector of the economy – Sector of an economy based on knowledge and skill
• Refusal of work – Behavior in which a person refuses regular employment
• Sinecure – Office or job with a salary but which requires little to no actual responsibility
• Underemployment – Underutilization of workers' talents or skills in employment
• Vacuum activity – Instinctive behavior performed when there is nothing else to do
• Workhouse – Institution for those unable to support themselves