Bullshit Jobs

One-line: David Graeber’s thesis (originally the essay “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”) that a large and growing share of jobs are ones even the people doing them consider pointless.

In Utopia For Realists the concept anchors a value-vs-pay inversion: the jobs that shift money around create little tangible value yet pay the most, while the “agents of prosperity” — teachers, nurses, garbage collectors — are paid poorly. Bregman pairs it with the claim that “for every dollar a bank earns, ~60 cents is destroyed elsewhere,” whereas a dollar to a researcher returns at least $5 — i.e., it has become increasingly profitable not to innovate.

Related concepts

• David Graeber — anthropologist who originated the thesis in the essay “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.”
• Rutger Bregman — author of Utopia For Realists, where the concept anchors the value-vs-pay inversion described above.
• Universal Basic Income — the companion policy thesis Bregman pairs with bullshit jobs, decoupling income from the pointless-job economy.
• Innovation — the page’s claim that it has become “increasingly profitable not to innovate” frames bullshit jobs as the inverse of value-creating research.

Where this appears

• Utopia For Realists