Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Graeber's thesis: a growing proportion of jobs in advanced economies are perceived as meaningless by the people who hold them, and this is not a bug in capitalism but a structural feature — the system produces unnecessary work because the alternatives (leisure, autonomy, fewer hours) threaten the social order that depends on full employment. The book began as a viral essay and the expansion is uneven, but the core argument has not been refuted. For product direction the connection to Morris's Useful Work versus Useless Toil is direct, and the diagnostic is uncomfortably applicable: how much of what a product organisation produces is experienced as meaningful by the people who produce it? Read alongside Sennett's The Craftsman for the positive counterpart. Graeber died in 2020; this book and Debt are his most lasting.