Working Hard or Hardly Working? A Response to David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs

One would think that a well paying job with minimal effort would be the least stressful job. I thought this too, but I could not have been more wrong. In the summer of 2021, I had an internship at a biotechnology company where this was the case. I got paid for an entire day of work, left early almost every other day, and always had lunch catered. But for some reason, I was extremely stressed out by doing two to three hours of work a day, finishing all my tasks, and then having to painstakingly pretend to be busy for the next few hours. I found escape through countless crossword and sudoku puzzles in my time there and had so much free time that I started to research music marketing and write songs on the clock. With all the leisure time and work completed, it was difficult to pinpoint this stress. But, once I read David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs it all made sense. I was finally able to articulate my feelings of anxiety from the pointlessness and uselessness I felt at my job. After reading Graeber’s work, I realized that my job at the company was a bullshit job.

Back in 2013, David Graeber laid the blueprint for what he considered to be a bullshit job and became fixated on the paradox of how Capitalism, an economic system that boasts of the efficiency found in free-market competition, creates useless jobs that only exist to keep workers busy. Through this deeper consideration of why bullshit jobs existed, Graeber found his answer was not solely economic, but rather had political and moral implications; he explains how if a small and select group of people possess the majority of a society’s disposable wealth, then there will be an unequal wealth gradient that allows the growth of jobs in a society that only reflect what the top one percent find valuable. Thus, bullshit jobs are ultimately pointless. They inherently waste resources, and if they were to disappear, there would be no effect on an organization’s overall productivity. Individuals in these jobs find themselves having perspectives they do not agree with because the duties of the job are more in line with the opinions of the ruling class than the workers themselves. This leads workers to associate their work with their identity which can have psychologically destructive effects on one’s self-worth if their job serves no actual purpose. This concluded Graeber’s article and at the time, it was just a small piece in a larger series of articles meant to offer a critique of the neoliberal ideology of free market and highlight the continuous economic decline in America despite policies that promised to utilize the power of the marketplace. However, Graeber saw his article gain a significant amount of traction on the internet and eventually the polling agency YouGov decided to conduct a poll based on Graeber’s original theory on bullshit jobs. The results were astounding. Around 37% of respondents thought their job “didn’t make a meaningful contribution to the world” which unequivocally supported Graeber’s postulation. Consequently, he was able to leverage the success of his article as an opportunity to understand what bullshit jobs tell us about the deeper social problems we face in the workforce and how work has become a simple means to an end.

One of Graeber’s biggest strengths as an author is his background in anthropology and study of the social problems that accompany economics. This is evident as Graeber emphasizes the importance of social connection and one’s need for a purpose throughout his book. He also frequently chastises economics for ignoring the individual, a common theme in Graeber’s writing over the last few decades. For instance, in his article titled Against Economics, Graeber writes “Economic theory as it exists increasingly resembles a shed full of broken tools. This is not to say there are no useful insights here, but fundamentally the existing discipline is designed to solve another century’s problems”(Graeber, 2019). This sentiment is integral to how Graeber frames his argument throughout the book and is reflected in his frequent use of an anthropological approach as opposed to an economic one.

In Bullshit Jobs, Graeber pulls from thousands of personal testimonies to identify the essence of a bullshit job and answer questions about society’s complacency with these jobs such as why we tolerate their existence despite widespread unhappiness and psychological torment. The subjectivity of Graeber’s sources and heavy use of personal anecdotes might seem like a weakness to many economists, but in reality it is one of this book’s greatest strengths. In my opinion, Bullshit Jobs is more focused on helping the reader divorce the notions of work, productivity, and time than it is about empirically solving the issue of bullshit jobs. This results in Graeber’s solution to bullshit jobs, universal basic income, feeling more like a random afterthought than a practical approach. Thus, in tandem with his anthropological lens, Graeber’s work reads best as a self-help book that aims to bring humanity to our jobs and teach readers that it’s okay to give ourselves more leniency and forgiveness.

For the first half of the book, Graeber tries his best to paint a picture of bullshit jobs with the widest brushstrokes possible. To show readers the many forms of bullshit jobs, he draws on a wide array of examples such as niche and absurd jobs like that of a government employee who is a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor to more mundane examples of office jobs where workers pretend to be productive while they are actually studying art history behind their boss’s back. Graeber even creates his own taxonomy of five categories of bullshit jobs to help make classification of personal testimonies referenced later in the book more digestible. These classes are sorted by flunkies, task masters, box tickers, duct tapers, and goons. Flunkies are unnecessary subordinates in jobs that only exist to make a superior feel important, such as a concierge whose sole purpose is to serve as a doorman. In contrast, a task master is an unnecessary superior, like a middle manager, who assigns work that could be assigned independently without his or her input. Box tickers are useless positions for companies or bureaucracies to claim they are doing something they are not actually doing. For example, local government positions have jobs that fill out meaningless paperwork that serves as busywork that is never fully utilized. Duct tapers are jobs that exist because of structural errors or faults in a system. These jobs can often be automated such as a worker whose only job is to manually copy data into spreadsheets. Finally, goons are more aggressive positions in which employees try to trick and pressure individuals into making decisions that are not in their best interest. An example of this would be a call center employee trying to sell people services they do not need.

Consequently, Graeber is very successful at immersing the reader in the world of bullshit jobs and giving them the tools to critically analyze how a job could be considered pointless. He takes advantage of this long-winded exhibition to empower his readers and give them the ability to recognize if they currently are or previously have been in a bullshit job.

Graeber then goes a step further and tells readers that it is only the workers who have the power to declare if their job is bullshit. This definition could be considered negligent to those who have overcome the boredom of their job to find purpose or seen as a reduction of the issue at hand by using “purpose” as the only metric of one’s job. However, I think Graeber’s definition is meant more to provide freedom to the worker and allow one to question long-standing institutions and oppressive economic systems. Those workers who have found solace in their job and can deal with the lack of purpose are not the intended audience for Graeber’s book. Instead, he uses the opening of this book to unite those who feel disillusioned by convincing them of the prevalence and normalization of bullshit jobs.

Graeber uses the second half of his book to answer questions that readers are left with about the abundance of bullshit jobs and how they are able to paradoxically exist. While Graeber wrote with more leisure and took time to explain the intricacies of bullshit jobs in the first few chapters, he is very quick to explain society’s complacency with these jobs and how they are able to continue proliferating. He promptly identifies structural reasons bullshit jobs are able to flourish under capitalism and develops the concept of managerial feudalism, a state in which companies derive most of their profits from finance rather than the production and sale of goods. This comes off very overwhelming as Graeber warns of the endless hierarchies and the unstoppable multiplication of intermediary positions that hoard profits before they reach actual workers. Nonetheless, he finds a way to capitalize on the anxiety of readers and turn that fear into introspection by switching the focus from macro-scale economics to individual workers. A reader might feel hopeless to the whims of capitalism, but Graeber wants to soothe those worries by explaining to the readers the paradox of bullshit jobs. He outlines how most people find their sense of self-worth in their job, but most people hate their jobs. While it might seem late into the book to bring up this paradox, Graeber was actually developing the paradox throughout the entirety of Bullshit Jobs. He had been building the idea that as we continue to torment ourselves with counterproductive jobs, we start to grow resentful towards those who are able to find purpose in their job. This jealousy is part of the reason the paradox persists and why workers try to fit into the workplace by forcing themselves to appear productive. This cycle has been continuing for centuries after the industrial revolution and is part of what keeps us trapped in meaningless jobs. Furthermore, this hatred of purpose filled jobs translates into lower salaries for jobs that have more innate purpose, such as public educators or professors, because having meaning in your job is seen as a reward in itself that does not need monetary compensation. Graeber continues to illustrate how this cycle positively feeds back into itself and how this resentment that holds our society together keeps getting stronger. Thus, just as Graeber helped readers realize they are in a bullshit job in the first half of the book, he continues to convince the reader they have the power to break this cycle of bullshit jobs in the second. By continually building the idea of why we hold resentment towards purpose filled jobs, Graeber allows readers to easily identify this internalized hate towards those who find purpose in their work.

Graeber also wrote this book to help deconstruct the reader’s concept of work and explains how the idea of work, time, and productivity became synonymous. Throughout Bullshit Jobs, the reader is constantly retold the story of how work and time came to be seen as the same value after the Industrial Revolution. This constant repetition is helpful to realize the absurdity of using time as a metric for work and that over the course of history, work has been lost as a measure of itself. Graeber brings in more personal examples to show how we contrived productivity as an alternative method for measuring how diligent a worker is instead of the actual work he or she completes. This leads workers to fake productivity and pretend they are more busy than they actually are. In combination with the cycle of resentment, workers find themselves not telling others of their fake productivity which furthers the divide between purposeful and purposeless jobs. Under managerial feudalism, there are frequently emerging power dynamics in which higher-ups inflict “spiritual violence” upon workers by leaving them devoid of purpose while they must pretend to be productive. Graeber is able to elucidate this feeling of anxiety for his readers so that they have the ability to articulate how their job causes them stress in terms of work, time, and productivity. This lets the reader separate the concepts themselves instead of Graeber having to force the idea. This is crucial for the book’s argument and ultimately is why empirical methods would have hurt the integrity of Bullshit Jobs. The problem of bullshit jobs is not only economic, but social and political. If Graeber were to only use statistics as evidence, the reader would not be able to fix their internalized hate and would be unable to grasp how bullshit jobs are a threat to humanity. As a result, Graeber has used his arguments and personal testimonies throughout this book to help readers understand the problem on their own accord so that they can be the ones equipped to divorce the notions of time, work, and productivity themselves.

Although Graeber does a great job at detailing the problem of bullshit jobs and helping to empower his readers, he fails to provide a satisfying solution to bullshit jobs. The majority of the book is spent defining bullshit jobs and explaining their role in society and Graeber leaves himself with a single chapter to provide a remedy for this problem. His final argument for universal basic income addresses a solution for the structural problems created by Capitalism, but largely neglects how the individual can find freedom while still constrained by the economic system. At its core, Graeber’s argument for universal basic income is simple: If all bullshit jobs were to suddenly be removed from society, workers would need financial support to help them with basic needs and to find jobs with purpose. This foundational idea helps to counteract the systemic issues of Capitalism in the far future, but Graeber abruptly ends the book without giving any advice for the present. The answer of Universal Basic Income does serve to fix the structural issues presented throughout the book, but still leaves the individual reader desiring more. For one fully engaged with Graeber’s argument, the lack of immediate solution is not abhorrent and the previous chapters allow for the reader to easily agree with the need to provide a safety net to those who wish to leave their bullshit job as structural changes arise. However, the final chapter on universal basic income alienates readers who were not fully convinced by Graeber’s previous arguments. The author makes the assumption that the audience is already in support of his argument and he does not attempt to bolster his stance. The ending of the book falls flat in this regard and Graeber drops the ball right before he can leave a lasting impact on his audience. Consequently, Graeber could have expanded on more immediate solutions to help readers to find purpose or enjoyment in their work. Even in his final words, Graeber alludes to his intended audience being people who are willing to learn and attempt to solve this problem. But, I think that Graeber loses a large part of his audience in this last chapter when instead he could have added on to his policy proposal and spent time trying to help readers find happiness in themselves.

Even though Bullshit Jobs is focused on the structural issues of Capitalism and solving macro-level issues, individuals are unable to fix those problems themselves and are still left to cope with the fallout of bullshit jobs. Graeber could have added a final chapter to address more of the individual aspect in his conclusion and given readers techniques to endure bullshit jobs. One possible approach could have been writing about decentering, a shift in mindset through mindfulness, to have better self-management and higher self-efficacy. In particular, Matthew R. Pearson et al. (2015) conducted a cross sectional study with 1200 individuals and found that these mindfulness techniques had a positive effect on participants ability to cope with anxiety and depressive symptoms. This allowed them to find greater senses of purpose and more control in changing their life outcomes. These skills would be especially helpful for those in bullshit jobs who need a shift in mindset to encourage them to look for jobs with more purpose. The inclusion of mindfulness would have helped Graeber inspire readers to seek reform in the world of bullshit jobs despite structural change being something not plausible for the next few decades.

Bullshit Jobs serves a greater purpose than just answering questions about what is a bullshit job and why society tolerates the growth of these jobs. Graeber’s professional background as an anthropologist and his consistent use of personal testimonies may at times seem to elude a successful analysis of bullshit jobs, but in actuality, his eclectic writing style within the field of economics helps to bring more life and a fresh perspective to the subject. Looking at his work as an anthropologist, we can see the study of humanity Graeber has put on display and that Bullshit Jobs teaches us more about ourselves than the economy. Economists frequently refer to Rational Choice Theory and assume that individuals will make the most cost- effective decision for the most profit with the least work. However, Bullshit Jobs shows how faulty this theory can be while looking at the countless testimonies of workers around the world who have low effort jobs with well paying salaries and do not find happiness in the “rational” option. We have even seen Rational Choice Theory fail at the national scale during the 2008 financial crisis when normal people took out mortgages they knew they could not afford and executives at firms investing in securities backed by these risky mortgages (Siegel et al., 2009). Thus, we see how Rational Choice Theory fails to accommodate the individual and does not take the time to value the worker. Unlike Rational Choice Theory, this is something Graeber does very well. Reading Bullshit Jobs as a self-help book, we can see how Graeber accommodates the individual and wants to help them on their journey to find happiness. While the world of economics can be coldhearted and an economic system like Capitalism takes advantage of the less fortunate, Graeber reminds us in his book that it is okay to not be content with life and that we should treat ourselves with compassion despite unforgiving institutions that can drain our souls.

Works Cited

Graeber, D. (2019). Bullshit jobs. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Graeber, D. (2019, December 5). Against economics: David Graeber. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/12/05/against-economics/

Pearson, M. R., Brown, D. B., Bravo, A. J., & Witkiewitz, K. (2014). Staying in the moment and finding purpose: The Associations of Trait Mindfulness, decentering, and purpose in life with depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and alcohol-related problems. Mindfulness, 6(3), 645–653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-014-0300-8

Siegel, J., Herring, R., Marston, R., Winter, S. G., & Korbin, S. J. (2009, May 13). Why economists failed to predict the financial crisis. Knowledge at Wharton. Retrieved from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-economists-failed-to-predict-the-financial-crisis/