Bullshit jobs and the missing 15-hour week

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted we’d be working 15-hour weeks by now. On the technology, he was right - a single person can spin up in an afternoon what once took a team of developers months. So why are so many people still chained to a laptop on the sofa? The standard answer is that we’re greedy consumers who traded leisure for gadgets. I don’t think that holds.

The rise of bullshit jobs

Most new jobs aren’t making the gadgets. They’re in administration, management, and consulting - roles that frequently feel pointless to the people in them. The anthropologist David Graeber called these “bullshit jobs”: work that doesn’t seem to contribute anything tangible. The striking part is how often the holders agree. If productivity gains were real and so much labour is non-productive, who is actually making the things we buy?

This is about power, not just economics

A workforce with abundant free time is a political force - see the social upheavals of the 1960s, which coincided with the period when Keynes’s prediction still looked reachable. Keeping people busy, even with low-value work, maintains the status quo. It also reinforces the idea that work is a moral duty regardless of its actual value, which conveniently directs resentment away from those at the top and towards people whose work is plainly essential.

Notice how much criticism train drivers attract during a strike. The very fact that a strike causes disruption is proof their work is essential. The reaction inverts the logic.

The value paradox

The jobs that most obviously matter - nurses, teachers, sanitation workers - tend to be among the least valued in pay and status. Remove them and society stops functioning; COVID’s “essential workers” made the point in real time. Remove the corporate lawyers and consultants and the effect is less clear. This mismatch is not an accident. It’s what a system optimised to preserve existing power produces.

What to take from it

• Automation reorganised work; it didn’t reduce it. Technology could buy free time. It was spent creating more work instead. Using technology to actually serve you requires intent.
• Bullshit jobs aren’t only a corporate problem. They span sectors, and what feels meaningless to one person is fulfilling to another. Self-awareness is the filter.
• The value we assign to work is often detached from its impact. Essential work is underpaid; much high-status work is not obviously essential. That’s neither stable nor fair.
• The system isn’t designed to make you happy. It’s designed to preserve its structure. Understanding that lets you navigate it on your own terms.
• This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s not laziness or greed. It’s structural - and naming the structure is the first step to choosing differently inside it.

Source: Graeber’s original essay, “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”.