‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless

Abstract

Recent studies show that many workers consider their jobs socially useless. Thus, several explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed. David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’, for example, claims that some jobs are in fact objectively useless, and that these are found more often in certain occupations than in others. Quantitative research on Europe, however, finds little support for Graeber’s theory and claims that alienation may be better suited to explain why people consider their jobs socially useless. This study extends previous analyses by drawing on a rich, under-utilized dataset and provides new evidence for the United States specifically. Contrary to previous studies, it thus finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on bullshit jobs. At the same time, it also confirms existing evidence on the effects of various other factors, including alienation. Work perceived as socially useless is therefore a multifaceted issue that must be addressed from different angles.

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‘Bullshit’ After All?
Why People Consider
Their Jobs Socially Useless
Simon Walo
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
Recent studies show that many workers consider their jobs socially useless. Thus, several
explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed. David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’,
for example, claims that some jobs are in fact objectively useless, and that these are found more
often in certain occupations than in others. Quantitative research on Europe, however, finds
little support for Graeber’s theory and claims that alienation may be better suited to explain why
people consider their jobs socially useless. This study extends previous analyses by drawing on a
rich, under-utilized dataset and provides new evidence for the United States specifically. Contrary
to previous studies, it thus finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on bullshit jobs. At the
same time, it also confirms existing evidence on the effects of various other factors, including
alienation. Work perceived as socially useless is therefore a multifaceted issue that must be
addressed from different angles.
Keywords
alienation, bullshit jobs, meaningful work, occupations, socially useless jobs
Introduction
David Graeber (2013) has hit a nerve with his statement that many of today’s jobs are in
fact socially useless and thus – in his words – bullshit jobs (BS jobs). His original article
quickly became so popular that within weeks it was translated into more than a dozen
languages and reprinted in different newspapers around the world. A few years later,
Graeber followed up on this article and published a book on the same topic that continues
to inspire a vivid public debate (Graeber, 2018). However, the original evidence pre-
sented by Graeber was mainly qualitative, which made it difficult to assess the
Corresponding author:
Simon Walo, Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland.
Email: walo@soziologie.uzh.ch
1175771WES0010.1177/09500170231175771Work, Employment and SocietyWalo
research-article2023
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2 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
magnitude of the problem. Other researchers therefore started to contribute to this debate
by providing quantitative evidence on the issue.
Since the true usefulness of jobs cannot be measured directly, they all follow Graeber’s
approach and ask workers whether they personally think that their jobs are useful to
society. Thus, a YouGov poll finds that 37% of British working adults believe their job is
not ‘making a meaningful contribution to the world’ (Dahlgreen, 2015). In a more exten-
sive study covering 47 countries, the authors find that ‘8 percent of workers perceive
their job as socially useless, while another 17 percent are doubtful about the usefulness
of their job’ (Dur and van Lent, 2019: 3). Finally, while using a slightly different word-
ing, another study finds that 4.8% of workers in the EU28 consider their jobs useless
(Soffia et al., 2022). These numbers are not as high as claimed by Graeber (2018), and
do not increase over time either (Soffia et al., 2022). Nevertheless, they show that mil-
lions of people consider their jobs to be socially useless. If these people are right, this
would mean that a significant amount of work and resources are currently wasted.
Clearly, this calls for a more detailed examination.
In consequence, these results have been analysed regarding several characteristics of
the responding workers. Thus, various studies show that there are considerable differ-
ences in perceived job-usefulness between countries, economic sectors, occupations, age
groups, genders and more (Dahlgreen, 2015; Dean et al., 2022; Delucchi et al., 2021; Dur
and van Lent, 2019; Soffia et al., 2022). In addition, studies also show that workers who
perceive their job to be socially useless tend to display low job satisfaction (Dur and van
Lent, 2019) and low general well-being (Soffia et al., 2022). Various explanations have
therefore been proposed as to why people find their jobs socially useless. Graeber him-
self, for example, claims that some jobs are in fact objectively useless to society, and that
people are usually correct in assessing the usefulness of their own jobs. According to
Graeber, socially useless jobs are therefore more often found in certain occupations than
in others. Soffia et al. (2022), however, find that ‘there is little validity in Graeber’s pre-
diction of BS occupations’ and suggest that alienation might be better suited to explain
why people think that their jobs are useless. According to this view, the problem is not
that jobs are in fact useless, but that people perceive them as such if they suffer from
unfavourable working conditions.
The following article re-evaluates Graeber’s argument by using data from the 2015
American Working Conditions Survey (Maestas et al., 2017). It thus builds on previous
analyses and extends them in two important ways. On the one hand, it provides new
evidence for the United States specifically. This is important since Graeber’s argument
may apply only to heavily financialized Anglo-Saxon countries (see Soffia et al., 2022).
On the other hand, this rich dataset allows Graeber’s argument to be tested while also
controlling for various other potential factors such as alienation. This is important since
these factors may not affect occupations equally and therefore may distort empirical tests
of Graeber’s theory if not controlled for.
Contrary to Soffia et al. (2022), this article finds robust support for Graeber’s theory
on BS jobs. Thus, it finds that working in one of the occupations highlighted by Graeber
significantly increases the probability that workers perceive their jobs as socially useless
(compared with all others). In fact, Graeber’s occupations are most strongly associated
with being socially useless when other factors are controlled for. Additionally, this article

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also confirms existing evidence on other factors such as alienation, social interaction and
public service motivation. It thus concludes that work perceived as socially useless is a
multifaceted issue that must be addressed from different angles. Furthermore, research
on socially useless jobs should consider that results may differ depending on geographi-
cal context and on various methodological decisions.
Terminology
In the literature based on Graeber’s (2018) theory, several terms with similar meanings
are used. Graeber himself, for example, speaks of ‘bullshit jobs’, while Dur and van Lent
(2019) use the term ‘socially useless jobs’ when testing his theory. In addition, Soffia et
al. (2022) also link Graeber’s theory with the literature on ‘meaningful work’. This sec-
tion explains what is meant by these terms and thereby contextualizes the terminology
that is used in this article.
As mentioned above, a crucial aspect of Graeber’s theory is that he considers some
jobs to be inherently useless to society. He therefore defines BS jobs as:
a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even
the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment,
the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case. (Graeber, 2018: 9f)
This definition highlights three important aspects of Graeber’s theory. First, Graeber
argues that BS jobs are ‘a form of paid employment’. This clearly excludes self-employed
work and other economic activities that cannot be considered paid employment from his
definition. Second, Graeber defines BS jobs as ‘pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious’.
According to him, this includes jobs that either simply do not contribute to society at all
or that are in fact actively harmful to society. Third, this definition also includes that
people with BS jobs feel ‘obliged to pretend that this is not the case’. Graeber argues that
there are two reasons for this. On the one hand, workers would probably be dismissed if
they announce the uselessness of their jobs to their superiors. On the other hand, workers
often also feel obliged to hide their feelings in other contexts because it is usually not
socially accepted to admit them.
Of course, this definition raises the question of how one is to decide whether a job
makes a positive, a negative, or no contribution to society at all. To make such a deci-
sion, one clearly needs a theory of social value. Graeber, however, explicitly states
that he does not want to impose such a theory on people’s jobs himself. Even though
some researchers have tried to measure social value objectively (e.g. Lawlor et al.,
2009; Lockwood et al., 2017), he argues that in any such attempt the researchers
must ultimately make a choice between competing theories of social value that can
only be justified on subjective grounds. For this reason, Graeber believes that the
best way to measure the real social value of jobs is to ask the workers themselves for
their opinion (Graeber, 2018: 10). Thus, his definition of BS jobs also includes an
important subjective element by stating that ‘the employee cannot justify its exist-
ence’. It is important to note, however, that Graeber assumes workers to be correct
in their assessments generally.

4 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
In practice, researchers therefore usually operationalize Graeber’s theory by asking
workers whether they think that their jobs are useful to society (Dahlgreen, 2015; Dur
and van Lent, 2019; Soffia et al., 2022). Assuming that workers can meaningfully assess
their contribution to society, this certainly captures the most central aspect of Graeber’s
definition. However, it also ignores the two other aspects since workers must not neces-
sarily feel a need to pretend that they do not have a socially useless job even if they do,
and since it allows for the inclusion of self-employed workers in the analyses. It may
therefore be more precise to speak of ‘socially useless jobs’ instead of BS jobs, as Dur
and van Lent (2019) do. However, since Soffia et al. (2022) emphasize that factors other
than objective uselessness may cause workers to believe that their jobs are socially use-
less, and since this article wants to take these factors into account, it generally speaks of
‘jobs perceived as socially useless’ as its object of investigation. This way, no assump-
tion about the objective usefulness of jobs must be made in advance. Instead, one can
simply test whether the data support Graeber’s claims for objective uselessness or other
factors that focus more on subjective experiences. Nevertheless, this article may occa-
sionally use the term ‘socially useless jobs’ as an abbreviation for ‘jobs perceived as
socially useless’ to facilitate readability.
Finally, the literature cited above must also be placed inside the broader context of the
literature on meaningful work. In this literature, meaningfulness typically describes a
certain positive significance that work holds for an individual (Rosso et al., 2010). It is
therefore a concept that is rooted in the subjective experience of workers. Not surpris-
ingly, meaningfulness can have many different sources, and perceiving one’s job as
socially useful is usually considered an important one (Allan, 2017; Martela and Pessi,
2018). Other frequently mentioned factors are often summarized under the term ‘self-
realization’ and cover aspects such as working autonomously, building competence, or
expressing personal interests (Martela and Pessi, 2018; Steger et al., 2012). Repeatedly,
studies have shown that perceiving one’s work as meaningful is an important source of
motivation, productivity and well-being. Thus, a lack of meaning often leads to reduced
motivation and productivity or even to serious psychological problems in workers (Allan
et al., 2019; Fairlie, 2011; Hu and Hirsh, 2017). Viewing socially useless jobs in the
context of meaningful work therefore further demonstrates the relevance of this topic for
the economy in general and for affected workers in particular.
Graeber’s theory
Why do people consider their jobs socially useless? As shown above, this question can
be answered either by claiming that some jobs are in fact socially useless, as Graeber
(2018) does, or by pointing to various other factors that may affect people’s subjective
perception. This section provides a broad overview of Graeber’s argument and derives
several testable hypotheses.
At the centre of Graeber’s argument stands an economic system that he calls ‘manage-
rial feudalism’. Thus, he argues that the financialization of the economy has led to a situa-
tion where powerful elites are more concerned with the appropriation of goods rather than
with their production. The financial sector thus essentially only ‘creates money (by making
loans) and then moves it around in extremely complicated ways, extracting another small

Walo 5
cut with every transaction’, according to Graeber (2018: 167) (see also French, 2008;
Lockwood et al., 2017). In addition, he argues that the increasing financialization of the
economy pressurizes companies into profit maximization rather than a maximization of
social value, which makes companies behave in ways similar to the financial sector itself.
Graeber therefore claims that the role of elites and the way the economy works have
changed. Thus, under classic capitalist conditions, it made no sense to hire unnecessary
workers, since elites were involved in producing goods and competition forced them to be
as efficient as possible. If elites are only extracting value rather than producing it, however,
they must not be concerned with efficiency. Rather, Graeber argues, they can simply extract
and redistribute money as they please, similar to feudal lords. This allows them to gather
an entourage of followers who are paid to maintain and display their power but who con-
tribute nothing useful to society. These are Graeber’s BS jobs.
Graeber then identifies five different types of BS jobs, three of which are linked to
specific occupations. Graeber’s theory can therefore be tested by examining whether
people in these occupations consider their jobs to be socially useless more often than
others. The remainder of this section thus gives an overview of these three types and
explains why they are considered socially useless by Graeber. The other two types are
not considered here since the available data do not allow identifying them.1
First, Graeber identifies jobs that ‘exist only or primarily to make someone else look
or feel important’ (Graeber, 2018: 28). According to Graeber, these are typically employ-
ees such as administrative assistants who are hired by managers simply for the sake of
feeling successful and important. Other examples given by Graeber include doormen,
elevator operators and receptionists who are not primarily hired for their services but
because they are a display of the wealth and power of their employers. It is important to
note, however, that Graeber does not consider all jobs in these occupations to be socially
useless. Thus, there may well be many administrative assistants and receptionists whose
work is in fact essential for the functioning of their organizations and therefore socially
useful without a doubt. Graeber merely claims that, if people are hired to make someone
else look important, it is predominantly in these occupations.
Second, Graeber identifies jobs that are not only useless but actively harmful to soci-
ety. Perhaps most obviously, he points out occupations typically found in the financial
sector. This is not surprising, considering that he accuses the whole financial sector of
being largely about creating debt and extracting money from the real economy (see
above). In addition, he also considers occupations to be harmful whose goal it is to
manipulate people into buying things they do not really need. These are typically adver-
tising and marketing staff, PR specialists, telemarketers, or, more broadly speaking, any-
one working in sales (see also Akerlof and Shiller, 2015; Thaler, 2018). Financial
consultants therefore represent a special case for Graeber since they fall into both these
categories: they sell financial products to people who do not necessarily need them (see
also Inderst and Ottaviani, 2012). Finally, other types of harmful occupations identified
by Graeber are corporate lobbyists and corporate lawyers. According to him, they both
involve a certain aggressive element because it is their job to assert the interests of their
employers against other interests. This can often mean asserting the interest of large
corporations against the interests of individuals or of society at large. Jobs in the military
also fall into this category if they do not serve the public good but the interests of

6 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
economic and political elites, which is the case in at least some countries according to
Graeber. Again, it must be noted, however, that Graeber does not consider all jobs in
these occupations to be socially harmful. He only claims that socially harmful jobs are
typically found in these occupations.
Finally, the third category identified by Graeber consists of only one occupation:
managers. There are, however, two different reasons why managers might consider their
jobs socially useless according to Graeber. On the one hand, there are some managers
who are simply not needed. They may assign work to their subordinates and supervise
them, but nothing would really change if they were not there anymore. On the other
hand, Graeber identifies managers who are not only unnecessary but who actively gener-
ate more socially useless work for others. These are the managers who create jobs that
belong to the first category described above.
Table 1 gives an overview of the three types of occupations that Graeber considers to
be socially useless. The empirical part of this article will test whether working in any of
these occupations is statistically associated with the perception that one’s job is socially
useless. However, as some of these occupational categories are too narrow, they cannot
be measured with the available data. Thus, only the occupations printed in bold in Table
1 are tested empirically in this article. This leads to the following hypotheses:
People consider their jobs socially useless more often than others if they work as administrative
assistants (H1), in sales and marketing occupations (H2), as corporate lawyers (H3), in finance
occupations (H4), or as managers (H5).
These occupations largely correspond to the occupations examined by Soffia et al.
(2022) to test Graeber’s theory. As mentioned above, however, they find little support for
these hypotheses in their European data. Dur and van Lent (2019), on the other hand, do
not test Graeber’s occupations systematically but find that people working in sales and
marketing (H2) or finance (H4) consider their jobs to be socially useless more often than
others. However, both these studies use different methods and examine other countries
than the present article. Results may therefore vary.
Table 1. Occupations with a high share of BS jobs (according to Graeber).
Description Occupations
Exist only or primarily to make someone else look
or feel important
• administrative assistants
• elevator operators and doormen
• receptionists
Jobs that are not only useless but actively harmful
to society
• sales and marketing occupations
• corporate lobbyists and lawyers
• military occupations
• occupations in the finance sector
Actively generate more socially useless work for
others
• managers
Note: Only bold occupations are tested in this article.
Source: Graeber (2018).

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Finally, it should also be noted that these are somewhat weak hypotheses. Thus, they
do not claim that all or even most jobs in these occupations are considered socially use-
less. Instead, they simply claim that more jobs in these occupations are considered
socially useless than in others. This is in line with previous studies on the topic (Dur and
van Lent, 2019; Soffia et al., 2022).
Alternative explanations
In contrast to Graeber’s theory, one does not necessarily need to claim that some jobs are
objectively useless in order to explain why people think so. Thus, various alternative
factors are discussed in the literature. Even though the focus of this article is on Graeber’s
theory, it is useful to know the alternatives since Graeber’s theory is tested against them
in the empirical part below. This section therefore briefly introduces the most important
alternative approaches to explaining why people consider their jobs socially useless.
Alienation
Probably the most prominent alternative explanation is alienation. It was introduced to
the debate by Dur and van Lent (2019) but discussed and tested empirically in more
detail by Soffia et al. (2022). However, even though both studies directly refer to the
theory of alienation by Karl Marx (1844), they emphasize different aspects of it.
Dur and van Lent (2019), on the one hand, argue that, due to an increasing division
of labour, workers perform increasingly specialized tasks. These are often routine
tasks that are highly repetitive and leave little room for creativity or autonomy, thus
preventing the self-realization of workers. Owing to these unfavourable working con-
ditions, it becomes increasingly difficult for workers to identify any final good as a
product of their own work. In consequence, they cannot recognize their contribution to
the production process anymore and feel that their work is socially useless. The divi-
sion of labour can therefore ‘make meaningful work look meaningless’ (p. 11). In their
empirical analyses, Dur and van Lent (2019) show that some occupations with a high
share of routine tasks indeed display a relatively high share of workers who consider
their jobs socially useless.
On the other hand, Soffia et al. (2022) also emphasize the importance of self-realiza-
tion at work but focus more on work relations than on the division of labour. Thus, they
argue that the potential for self-realization of workers may not only be frustrated by the
division of labour, but also by a broader set of unfavourable working conditions caused
by an unequal distribution of power at the workplace. More specifically, they argue that
bad management practices can prevent self-realization and thus cause feelings of aliena-
tion among workers (see also Bailey and Madden, 2016). This can happen through vari-
ous channels; for example, managers not organizing work successfully, managers not
respecting workers personally, or managers not supporting workers in their develop-
ment. As already mentioned above, the empirical analyses of Soffia et al. (2022) support
such an argument but offer little support for Graeber’s theory. They therefore conclude
that work considered socially useless is not the ‘result of managerial feudalism but rather
is a symptom of bad management and toxic workplace cultures leading to alienation’.

8 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
Self-employment
Another explanation for differences in the perceived usefulness of work is given by
Wolfe and Patel (2019) who examine self-employed workers. They argue that self-
employed individuals perceive their jobs as more socially useful than others because
of motivational factors that affect people’s decision to engage in self-employed work.
Thus, self-employed individuals ‘will need to assign higher levels of usefulness to
their jobs in order to achieve adequate levels of motivation to justify exposing them-
selves to such stressful situations’ (Wolfe and Patel, 2019: 3). Of course, however,
self-employment also means that workers are not alienated from their work due to bad
management (see above).
Social interaction
The literature on meaningful work introduced another factor that may be relevant for
explaining why people perceive their jobs as socially useless: social interaction. Nikolova
and Cnossen (2020), for example, find ‘supportive relationships with colleagues and
superiors’ to be the single most important factor contributing to meaningful work. If
people lack these relationships, however, they may feel like they are not an important
part of the organization they work for. Similar to the effect of alienation described above,
this may result in feelings of social uselessness. This argument does not only apply to
social interactions between workers, however, but it can also be extended to interactions
between workers and other people (Allan et al., 2018, 2020). Thus, it can be assumed that
personal contact with customers, for example, makes it easier for workers to see that they
are doing something useful for other people.
Public service motivation
Whether jobs are perceived as socially useless may also depend on who people work for.
Studies have shown, for example, that many employees prefer to work for socially
responsible organizations and are even willing to sacrifice pay to do so (Frank, 1996;
Frank and Smith, 2016). Such effects are well established in the literature on public ser-
vice motivation (Perry and Vandenabeele, 2015; Perry and Wise, 1990; Perry et al.,
2010). Its main claim is that some people have a strong preference for working in public
organizations because they consider this more useful to society than working in the pri-
vate sector (Christensen and Wright, 2011; Perry and Hondeghem, 2008). The same
argument is also used frequently to explain why people prefer to work for non-profit
organizations rather than for-profit organizations (King and Lewis, 2017; Rose-
Ackerman, 1996).
Again, the theory does not make any statements about the actual usefulness of work
in public or private organizations. It only states the empirically observable fact that some
people feel this way. Why exactly this is the case is usually not discussed, however. One
can only assume that the different missions of public and private organizations cause this
feeling. Thus, public organizations usually have a mission that is explicitly aimed at
providing some public good. Private companies may also have such goals and often even

Walo 9
state these explicitly. Nevertheless, at least part of their mission is usually also to gener-
ate profits. This may be seen as obstructive or even as contradictory to their social goals
by workers.
Data and method
To test the hypotheses derived from Graeber’s theory, binary logistic regression models
are estimated with perceived job-uselessness as the dependent variable, using data from
the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS) (Maestas et al., 2017). The
AWCS is based on the RAND American Life Panel, which is a nationally representative
sample of individuals living in the US who agreed to participate in regular online sur-
veys.2 From this panel, a probability-based sample was drawn for the AWCS and 3131
responses were registered in total, which accounts to a response rate of 64%. This dataset
was chosen mainly for two reasons: on the one hand, it includes a wide range of work-
related variables. To the author’s knowledge, it is in fact the only dataset available that
allows to control for all factors mentioned above, which is a crucial part of the analyses
in this article. On the other hand, it provides data from the US, which is especially inter-
esting since Graeber’s theory may only apply to heavily financialized Anglo-Saxon
countries and the US has not yet been analysed individually to date.
All analyses are limited to the working population aged 18 years or older. Further, 208
individuals must be excluded from the analyses due to missing data in relevant variables.
In addition, respondents working in two occupations with very low case numbers are
also excluded since they do not allow for any meaningful analyses. These are five
respondents working in ‘farming, fishing, and forestry’ and nine respondents in ‘military
specific occupations’.3 Thus, 1811 respondents remain in the final sample. Compared
with other studies on the same topic, this is a rather small sample, which may prevent
some effects from being statistically significant despite reasonably large coefficients.
Another drawback of using this dataset is that it only covers one country and therefore
does not allow for a generalization of results. Nevertheless, the AWCS still provides the
best data available for the purposes of this article.
The remainder of this section describes the variables that are used in the analyses in
more detail.
Perceived social uselessness
To measure how workers perceive the social usefulness of their jobs, the AWCS offers
two variables. One of them asks respondents how often their work provides them with
‘the feeling of making a positive impact on [their] community and society’, the other one
how often it provides them with ‘the feeling of doing useful work’. Answers are given on
a five-point scale ranging from ‘never’ to ‘always’. These two items correspond closely
to the variables used in previous studies. Thus, Soffia et al. (2022) use a variable from the
European Working Conditions Survey that is formulated identically to the second AWCS
item mentioned above. Dur and van Lent (2019), on the other hand, use a variable from
the International Social Survey that is similar to the first item mentioned above. For the
following analyses, only the first of these two items is used as it includes the beneficiary

10 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
of one’s work (society), which is an important aspect of the concept to measure. However,
all analyses have also been performed using the other item and results remain largely the
same (see online supplementary appendix C).
To measure jobs that are perceived as socially useless, the relevant item is trans-
formed into a binary variable that separates workers who think their job is socially use-
less (value 1) from the ones who think it is useful (value 0). Thus, respondents who
answer the original question with ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ belong to group 1, and all others to
group 0. This corresponds closely to the method used in previous studies on the topic
(Dur and van Lent, 2019; Soffia et al., 2022). All analyses have also been performed
using the original five-point scale and ordered logit models. Results are robust to this
methodical decision (see online supplementary appendix C).
Occupations
To describe occupations, the AWCS uses the two-digit Standard Occupational
Classification (SOC). Originally, this classification encompassed 23 different groups of
occupations. However, two groups are excluded from the following analyses due to the
low number of respondents working in these occupations (see above). This leaves 21
groups of occupations, each with between 29 (construction and extraction) and 267
(management) respondents. Luckily, several of these occupational groups relate closely
to the occupations that were hypothesized by Graeber to feature socially useless jobs.
Thus, administrative assistants (H1) are represented by ‘office and administrative sup-
port occupations’, sales and marketing occupations (H2) are represented by ‘sales and
related occupations’, corporate lawyers (H3) are represented by ‘legal occupations’,
finance occupations (H4) by ‘business and financial occupations’ and, finally, managers
(H5) are included in the data as ‘managers’. In the following analyses, these occupa-
tions will be compared with all others by including dummy variables in the regression
models. The coefficients of these dummy variables then represent the variance between
occupations that is not explained by the other variables. Assuming that all relevant char-
acteristics are controlled for, the dummies can be interpreted as the effect of occupa-
tions themselves, as proposed by Graeber.
Even though the occupational categories included in the AWCS are reasonably close
to Graeber’s occupations, it should be noted that some of them are broader than they
would be optimally.4 Legal occupations, for example, do not only include corporate law-
yers but any type of lawyer. Similarly, business and financial occupations include not
only bankers but also many types of other business specialists (e.g. HR workers and
logisticians). This may potentially affect the validity of the analyses as results may be
driven by different occupations included in the same category. If no effect is found for
legal occupations, for example, this may be either because Graeber’s hypothesis about
corporate lawyers is wrong or because there are too many other legal occupations
included in the same category, which are not expected to show any effect. If an effect is
observed as expected, however, there is little reason to assume that it is driven by other
occupations than the hypothesized ones, especially if all other potential factors are con-
trolled for.

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Control variables
To control for the alternative explanations described above, various control variables are
included in the models.
Alienation is measured by three variables: routine work, autonomy and quality of man-
agement. The frequency of routine work is measured by the mean of the variables for
‘repetitive hand or arm movements’ and ‘monotonous tasks’, both normalized to a range
from 0 to 1. Accordingly, the resulting variable also ranges from 0 to 1. The degree of
autonomy is measured similarly by the mean of six variables. These ask how often respond-
ents are involved in making decisions or how often they can make decisions themselves
(see online supplementary appendix A for the full list of indicators). All these variables are
measured on a five-point scale, where higher values mean more autonomy. The quality of
management is also measured by an index of several AWCS variables. These seven items
indicate whether respondents agree (1) or disagree (0) with different statements about their
superiors (see online supplementary appendix B for the full list of indicators). The index is
again the mean value of these variables and higher values mean better management.
Self-employment is measured by a simple dichotomous variable where 1 means ‘self-
employed’ and 0 means ‘salaried’.
Further, two variables for social interaction are included in the models. On the one
hand, contact with colleagues is measured by whether people ‘work in a group or team
that has common tasks and can plan its work’ (yes = 1). On the other hand, contact with
non-colleagues is measured by how often respondents’ jobs involve ‘dealing directly
with customers or service recipients’. This variable is measured on a seven-point scale
with higher values meaning more interaction.
To account for different types of organizations, the models also include categorical
variables on economic sectors and industries that respondents work in. The variable for
sectors distinguishes between the private, the public and the non-profit sector. The vari-
able for industries distinguishes between 20 different categories that correspond to the
two-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes.
Finally, variables for age, gender and education are also included. The latter is divided
into three tiers: high school or lower, college education and bachelor’s degree or higher.
Results
The following section presents the results of the empirical analyses. To do so, it will first
present some distributions and correlations as descriptive evidence. It will then show and
discuss the results from binary logistic regression models that are used to test Graeber’s
theory while controlling for other potential explanations. Finally, it will analyse the pre-
dicted probabilities of perceiving a job as socially useless in more detail for different
occupations.
Descriptive evidence
In total, more than 19% of all respondents in the 2015 AWCS sample perceive their jobs
as socially useless. This is a considerably larger share than Dur and van Lent (2019)

12 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
found in their 47 countries (8%) and Soffia et al. (2022) found in the EU28 (4.8%). At
the same time, however, it is also considerably less than the 37% that were found for the
UK by Dahlgreen (2015). These differences may arise for various reasons. Thus, it has
been argued, for example, that Anglo-Saxon countries are more heavily financialized
than others and therefore feature a higher share of socially useless jobs (Soffia et al.,
2022). Furthermore, results may vary based on the specific wording of the survey ques-
tions used. For example, people may be more likely to have a ‘feeling of doing useful
work’ (Soffia et al., 2022) than to agree with the statement that their jobs are making a
‘positive impact on [their] community and society’. Thus, only the latter statement speci-
fies who people’s work should be useful to (‘community and society’), while the former
statement leaves this open. Similarly, one may argue that ‘making a meaningful contribu-
tion to the world’ (Dahlgreen, 2015) is even more demanding, which is why fewer people
agree to this statement. In any case, the 19% found here clearly show that perceiving
one’s job as socially useless is more than just a marginal phenomenon in the US.
Furthermore, breaking down these 19% by occupation (Figure 1) reveals that workers
who believe their jobs are useless are distributed very unevenly across occupations.
Shares thus vary between 4.6% (education, training and library occupations) and 31.7%
(transportation and material moving). This strongly supports the notion that occupations
are meaningful categories to analyse when trying to explain why workers consider their
Education, Training, and Library
Management
Business & Financial
Computer & Mathematical
Architecture and Engineering
Life, Physical, and Social Science
Community and Social Service
Legal Occupations
Arts/Design/Entertainment/Sports/Media
Healthcare Practitioners and Technical
Healthcare Support Occupations
Protective Service Occupations
Food Preparation and Serving Related
Building/Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance
Personal Care and Service Occupations
Sales and Related Occupations
Oce and Administrative Support
Construction and Extraction
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair
Production Occupations
Transportation and Material Moving
0 10 20 30 40
% Socially Useless Jobs
Figure 1. Percentage of socially useless jobs by occupation.
Note: Data presented as two-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) with standard errors.
Source: American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS), 2015 (n = 1811).

Walo 13
jobs socially useless. In addition, Figure 1 reveals that Graeber’s occupations do not
stand out as the ones with the highest share of socially useless jobs. Even though three of
them are located clearly above the average (sales and related, office and administrative
support, business and financial) and the other two are only a little below (legal occupa-
tions, management), the highest share of socially useless jobs is found in other occupa-
tions. This provides only limited support to Graeber’s theory since it clearly cannot
explain the observed distribution all by itself. However, this distribution may also be
affected by other factors that vary across occupations. Multivariate analyses are therefore
needed to estimate the effect of occupations themselves.
Similar analyses can of course be carried out for other categorical variables. This is
depicted in Figure 2. First, we see that the share of workers who consider their jobs
socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector.
This is in line with the theory on public service motivation. Further, jobs involving team-
work are less likely to be considered socially useless, which supports the idea that social
interaction is a relevant factor. Finally, salaried workers consider their jobs socially use-
less more often than self-employed workers. The descriptive analyses thus also show
first support for the argument of Wolfe and Patel (2019).
In addition to the categorical variables, Tables 2 and 3 display the correlations between
all metric variables and the perceived usefulness of jobs (useful = 0, useless = 1). Table
2 contains the values for the full sample (n = 1811) but excludes the variable on manage-
ment quality since self-employed workers are included in the sample who do not have
superiors. Table 3 in turn excludes self-employed workers (n = 1606) and includes the
variable on management quality. As both tables display clearly, however, the values for
most variables do not differ much between the two samples. Thus, on the one hand, we
find that jobs with a high share of routine tasks are more likely to be considered socially
useless. On the other hand, we also find that jobs providing high levels of autonomy,
Salaried
Self−employed
No Teamwork
Teamwork
Private Sector
Public Sector
Nonprot Sector
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
% Socially Useless Jobs
Figure 2. Percentage of socially useless jobs by categorical variables (with standard errors).
Source: American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS), 2015 (n = 1811).

14 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
much contact with non-colleagues and high management quality are negatively corre-
lated with perceiving a job as socially useless. These results therefore also provide pre-
liminary support for the effects of social interaction and alienation.
Regression models
To test the hypotheses derived from Graeber’s theory, two binary logistic regression
models are estimated. Both these models estimate the probability of respondents to per-
ceive their job as socially useless (1) instead of socially useful (0). As explained above,
however, management quality cannot be measured for self-employed workers. Therefore,
model 1 is based on the full sample (n = 1811) but does not control for management
quality. Model 2, on the other hand, controls for management quality but excludes self-
employed workers in turn (n = 1606). Other than that, both models include all available
explanatory and control variables. Results from these models are reported in Table 4.
At the top of Table 4, one finds that four of the five occupations of interest display a
positive coefficient that is statistically significant in both models. This means that – all
else being equal – working in one of them is statistically associated with a higher prob-
ability of perceiving one’s job as socially useless when compared with other occupations.
This effect is most pronounced for sales occupations. Compared with the reference
group, working in sales thus increases the odds of perceiving one’s job as socially useless
by a factor of 2.29 (model 1) or even 2.61 (model 2). A similarly strong effect is observed
for business and finance occupations who are around 2.2 times more likely to consider
their jobs socially useless than the reference group. Further significant positive effects,
Table 2. Correlation matrix, metric variables and socially useless jobs, full sample (n = 1811).
Socially
useless job
Routine
work
Autonomy Contact with
non-colleagues
Management
quality
Socially useless job –
Routine work 0.13 –
Autonomy −0.25 −0.17 –
Contact with non-colleagues −0.13 0.05 −0.02 –
Management quality – – – – –
Table 3. Correlation matrix, metric variables and socially useless jobs, subsample without self-
employed (n = 1606).
Socially
useless job
Routine
work
Autonomy Contact with
non-colleagues
Management
quality
Socially useless job –
Routine work 0.13 –
Autonomy −0.25 −0.16 –
Contact with non-colleagues −0.13 0.06 −0.05 –
Management quality −0.27 −0.09 0.29 −0.05 –

Walo 15
Table 4. Output from logistic regression models (odds ratio). Dependent variable: perceiving
one’s job as socially useless (yes = 1).
Model 1 Model 2
Occupations (ref.: all others)
Office and administrative support 1.63*
(0.33)
1.72*
(0.37)
Sales and related 2.29**
(0.60)
2.61***
(0.75)
Legal 1.64
(0.75)
1.98
(0.97)
Business and finance 2.16**
(0.59)
2.20**
(0.65)
Managers 1.87**
(0.39)
1.85**
(0.41)
Alternative explanations
Routine work 1.83**
(0.38)
1.72*
(0.39)
Autonomy 0.48***
(0.04)
0.54***
(0.05)
Management quality – 0.18***
(0.04)
Self-employed (ref.: salaried) 0.88
(0.24)
–
Teamwork (ref.: no) 0.61***
(0.09)
0.64**
(0.10)
Contact with non-colleagues 0.84***
(0.03)
0.82***
(0.03)
Economic sector (ref.: private)
Public 0.74*
(0.11)
0.72
(0.12)
Non-profit 0.58*
(0.15)
0.55*
(0.15)
Other controls
Industry Yes Yes
Age 0.98***
(0.01)
0.97***
(0.01)
Female (ref.: male) 0.99
(0.14)
0.88
(0.14)
Education (ref.: high school or lower)
College 1.15
(0.24)
1.29
(0.30)
Bachelor’s degree or higher 1.11
(0.24)
1.33
(0.32)
Constant 6.91 21.49*
n1811 1606
Pseudo R2 (McFadden) 0.17 0.21
Notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. Standard errors in parentheses.

16 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
albeit of lesser magnitude, are observed for office and administrative assistants as well
as for managers. Only for legal occupations, neither model estimates a significant effect.
Despite reasonably large coefficients (1.64 and 1.98), the small number of AWCS
respondents working in legal occupations (42 or 33 without self-employed) leads to rela-
tively large standard errors for this group and thus makes it unlikely to find any signifi-
cant effects. In sum, these models therefore find significant support for hypotheses H1,
H2, H4 and H5, but not for H3. Graeber’s theory is therefore mostly supported by the
data used in this article.
The next section in Table 4 contains all variables linked to the alternative explanations
presented above. Here, again, we find that all variables except one are significantly asso-
ciated with perceived job uselessness as expected. Thus, routine work is associated with
a higher probability of perceiving one’s job as socially useless while more autonomy and
better management decrease the probability of doing so. All aspects of alienation dis-
cussed in the literature therefore seem to be relevant, which clearly confirms previous
findings (Dur and van Lent, 2019; Soffia et al., 2022). Next, both teamwork and contact
with non-colleagues are significantly associated with a lower probability of perceiving
one’s job as socially useless. This supports the idea that social interaction helps individu-
als to feel that their work is useful to other people. Further, Table 4 also shows that work-
ing in the public or the non-profit sector is associated with a lower probability for workers
to perceive their jobs as socially useless compared with working in the private sector.
The data used here therefore also support the explanation based on public service moti-
vation. Self-employment, however, does not seem to have a significant effect according
to these models. As additional analyses suggest, the low share of self-employed workers
considering their jobs socially useless can mainly be explained by their higher autonomy
relative to salaried workers. This casts some doubt on the findings of Wolfe and Patel
(2019) who did not control for autonomy in their analyses.
Among the other control variables, only age displays a statistically significant effect.
People therefore tend to consider their jobs more socially useful with older age. However,
the data used here cannot determine whether this is in fact an age or a cohort effect.
Gender and education, on the other hand, do not seem to be relevant here.
The model fit is reasonably high for both models, with pseudo R2 values (McFadden)
of 0.17 and 0.21. The goodness-of-fit was also assessed using the Hosmer–Lemeshow
test, indicating a good model fit for both models (model 1: χ2(8) = 5.25, p = 0.73; model
2: χ2(8) = 5.94, p = 0.65). Combining the theory on BS jobs and various alternative
factors therefore seems to be a fruitful approach to explaining why people consider their
jobs socially useless.
Predicted probabilities
The findings above already offer robust support for Graeber’s (2018) theory as most
relevant coefficients are shown to be statistically significant. Compared with all others,
working in Graeber’s occupations therefore increases the probability of perceiving one’s
own job as socially useless. However, such a statement only concerns relative probabili-
ties and does not indicate how high these probabilities really are. This section therefore

Walo 17
also provides data on the predicted probabilities to perceive one’s job as socially useless
conditional on working in a specific occupation.
Figure 3 displays the predicted probabilities obtained from the two regression models
in Table 4. It shows that people working in one of Graeber’s occupations consider their
jobs socially useless with a probability of between 0.17 (office and administrative sup-
port) and 0.21 (sales and related). This means that people, who work in these occupations
and who have fully average characteristics otherwise, are expected to consider their jobs
socially useless with a probability of between 0.17 and 0.21. Average people working in
other occupations, however, only consider their jobs to be socially useless with a proba-
bility of 0.11. The 95% confidence intervals again show that these differences are statisti-
cally significant for all hypothesized occupations except for legal occupations, which are
underrepresented in the AWCS sample and therefore display large standard errors.
It may be even more interesting, however, to estimate and compare the predicted
probabilities of Graeber’s occupations with the 16 occupations that were grouped
together so far. This would allow, for example, an examination of how Graeber’s occupa-
tions perform in comparison with other occupations with a high share of socially useless
jobs (see Figure 1) once other factors are controlled for. Thus, the effect of working in an
occupation may become weaker or stronger than suggested by the descriptive data,
depending on the effect of control variables. ‘Transportation and material moving’ occu-
pations, for example, have the highest share of workers who perceive their jobs as
socially useless. However, this could be explained by factors such as routine work or
autonomy. In this case, working in these occupations would not have an effect itself.
Sales and Related Occupations
Business and Financial Operations
Management
Legal Occupations
Oce and Administrative Support
Others
0 .1 .2 .3 .4
Predicted Probability
Model 1 Model 2
Figure 3. Predicted probabilities and 95% confidence interval for hypothesized occupations.
Notes: Model 1 is based on the full sample of 1811 respondents, model 2 on the subsample excluding self-
employed workers (n = 1606). See Table 4 for details. Predicted probabilities are estimated while fixing all
other independent variables at their mean values.

18 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
To compare all occupations with each other, another regression model is estimated that
includes the same variables as model 1 above. The only difference to model 1 is that the
variable for occupations now distinguishes between all 21 occupations instead of only six.
This way, it is possible to calculate predicted probabilities for all occupations and rank
them based on how strongly they are associated with socially useless jobs. To compare
these probabilities with the original distribution of socially useless jobs, another model is
estimated using only occupations as independent variables. Figure 4 displays the pre-
dicted probabilities from both these models. Results from the fully specified model are
depicted in black and those from the ‘occupations only’ model are shown in grey.
Figure 4 displays several findings. First, one notices that most confidence intervals
overlap and that there are no statistically significant differences between most occupa-
tions in these models. This is due to the small group sizes if all occupations are examined
individually. These results should therefore be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless,
they offer some valuable insights. Thus, one also notices that most predicted probabili-
ties move closer to zero once control variables are included. This is not surprising
because the control variables can explain some of the variance in the dependent variable.
Thus, the remaining effect of working in an occupation represents the variance between
Sales and Related Occupations
Business and Financial Operations
Computer and Mathematical
Management
Legal Occupations
Oce and Administrative Support
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair
Transportation and Material Moving
Protective Service Occupations
Community and Social Service
Arts/Design/Entertainment/Sports/Media
Food Preparation and Serving Related
Architecture and Engineering
Building/Grounds Cleaning & Maintenance
Personal Care and Service Occupations
Production Occupations
Education, Training, and Library
Healthcare Support Occupations
Healthcare Practitioners and Technical
Life, Physical, and Social Science
Construction and Extraction
0 .1 .2 .3 .4
Predicted Probability
with controlswithout controls
Figure 4. Predicted probabilities and 95% confidence interval for all occupations, with and
without control variables.
Notes: Both models are based on the full sample of 1811 workers. The model with control variables includes
all variables from model 1 in Table 4. Pseudo R2 (McFadden) is 0.05 for the model without control variables
and 0.18 for the model including control variables. Predicted probabilities are estimated while fixing all other
independent variables at their mean values.

Walo 19
occupations that is not explained by control variables, which also affects the predicted
probabilities. This leads to different results for different occupations. ‘Transportation and
material moving’ occupations, for example, display the highest value in the model with-
out controls since they have the highest share of socially useless jobs. When control vari-
ables are included, however, the predicted probability shrinks by more than 50%. This
means that the high share of socially useless jobs in this group can be explained to a large
part by the control variables and the occupation itself is not that strongly associated with
socially useless jobs. Interestingly, however, Graeber’s five occupations all end up on top
of the list now, thus displaying the strongest association with being perceived as socially
useless when control variables are included. Only ‘computer and mathematical’ occupa-
tions have a similarly high predicted probability.5 Assuming that all relevant factors are
controlled for, this further supports Graeber’s theory.
Discussion and conclusion
Using survey data from the US, this article tests Graeber’s (2018) argument that socially
useless jobs are primarily found in specific occupations. Doing so, it finds that working in
one of Graeber’s occupations significantly increases the probability that workers perceive
their job as socially useless (compared with all others). This is true for administrative sup-
port occupations, sales occupations, business and finance occupations, and managers.
Only legal occupations did not show a significant effect as predicted by Graeber’s theory.
More detailed analyses even reveal that, of all 21 occupations, Graeber’s occupations are
the ones that are most strongly associated with socially useless jobs when other factors are
controlled for. This article is therefore the first to find quantitative evidence supporting
Graeber’s argument. In addition, this article also confirms existing evidence on various
other factors that can explain why people consider their jobs socially useless, including
alienation, social interaction and public service motivation.
These findings may seem somewhat contradictory to the results of Soffia et al. (2022)
who find that Graeber’s theory is not supported by their data. This can be explained by
several differences between their study and this one. First, Soffia et al. ask people whether
they ‘have the feeling of doing useful work’, while this study asks them whether they
think they are making a ‘positive impact on [their] community and society’. These dif-
ferently worded questions may elicit different responses. However, additional analyses
show that results do not differ much between these questions (see online supplementary
appendix C). Second, Soffia et al. examine data from Europe, while this study uses data
from the US. This supports the notion that Graeber’s theory may only apply to heavily
financialized Anglo-Saxon countries. Third, the results of Soffia et al. are based on raw
distributions over occupations, while the findings presented here are mainly based on
regression models that control for various other factors. If only raw distributions are
analysed, however, this article also finds only limited support for Graeber’s theory.
This article therefore agrees with Soffia et al. (2022) that Graeber’s theory alone can-
not explain why people perceive their jobs as socially useless. Instead of rejecting the
theory altogether, however, the findings presented here suggest that it merely needs a
slight modification. Thus, Graeber claims that people are usually correct in assessing the
usefulness of their own jobs. This seems somewhat overstated, as results show that

20 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
people’s perception is also affected by various factors unrelated to actual usefulness.
People may therefore not only consider their jobs to be socially useless because they
truly are (Graeber), but also because unfavourable working conditions can sometimes
‘make meaningful work look meaningless’ (Dur and van Lent, 2019: 11). Work per-
ceived as socially useless is therefore a complex phenomenon and should be treated
accordingly. By giving up the assumption that people are usually right in their assess-
ment, however, all other aspects of Graeber’s theory can be upheld. Thus, some jobs may
in fact be useless to society, even if this is only one reason among others why people
perceive them as such.
If jobs can be perceived as socially useless for different reasons, this means that dif-
ferent measures can be taken to address the problem. Thus, some workers may benefit
from improving working conditions, for example by reducing factors leading to aliena-
tion or by increasing social interaction at work. If one considers the possibility that some
types of work are inherently useless to society, however, this has entirely different impli-
cations. To alleviate this problem, one would have to make adjustments in the economic
system and restrict activities with little or no use to society. Graeber himself, for exam-
ple, proposes a universal basic income that would allow people to decline working in a
job that they consider socially useless. Alternatively, policymakers may regulate certain
useless or harmful activities and attempt to align them more closely with socially desir-
able purposes. Frequently discussed examples are a stricter regulation of the financial
sector or setting limits to sales strategies (e.g. by banning ads from public spaces) (Inderst
and Ottaviani, 2012).
This article therefore also adds to a growing body of literature that challenges the
dominance of purely economic reasoning often found in economic research and policy-
making. As part of this literature, various prominent voices are calling for the economy
to be more closely aligned with social and ecological criteria (e.g. Fioramonti et al.,
2022; Hickel, 2020; Raworth, 2017; Schwab, 2021). This article shows that such a view
can also be expressed with respect to work. Thus, it seems to have long been the consen-
sus that the main goal of labour market policy is to achieve full employment and good
working conditions. This is well illustrated by the European Union’s former strategic
goal to create ‘more and better jobs’ (European Council, 2000). Graeber’s view, how-
ever, radically changes focus by asking whether work is actually beneficial to workers
and to society at large. Work is thus recognized not only as a necessary economic activity
that produces goods and provides people with an income but also as a way to contribute
to society that can in itself be deeply meaningful to people. Such a perspective clearly
deserves more attention.
Study limitations
Finally, as in most empirical research, the analyses in this article also have several limita-
tions. First, all analyses conducted here are based on cross-sectional survey data. This
means that they can only provide evidence of a possible causal relationship, but they
cannot definitely prove causality. Thus, it may also be true, for example, that people’s
attitudes towards work make them choose certain occupations instead of occupations
causing the attitudes. Other methods, such as experiments, may be needed to establish a

Walo 21
stronger causal relationship between variables. In addition, the data used in this article
only cover a single country, which means that any findings may not be applicable to
other contexts than the US. This is especially plausible since Graeber’s theory suggests
that it only applies to highly financialized countries such as the US. Further, this article
uses a relatively small sample of 1811 workers. In consequence, the number of respond-
ents per occupation is rather low in some cases. Insignificant effects may therefore be
caused by large standard errors and not by small true effect sizes. Related to this is the
problem that occupational categories are not detailed enough in the AWCS dataset used
here. This makes it hard to examine all the occupations that Graeber wrote about. For this
reason, several occupations were not considered at all in the empirical analyses, while
others were represented by more general categories (e.g. ‘legal occupations’ instead of
‘corporate lawyers’). Using a larger dataset would certainly allow the occupations to be
broken down into more detailed categories and more precise analyses to be conducted.
Finally, one must also consider that, even though this article supports Graeber’s argu-
ment, it cannot show that certain jobs are in fact socially useless. It merely shows that
people are more likely to consider their jobs socially useless if they work in certain occu-
pations pointed out by Graeber. Whether these jobs are in fact socially useless or not,
cannot be determined here and will be left to the reader for interpretation.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the editor, Donald Hislop, and the three anonymous review-
ers for their valuable and insightful comments, which greatly helped to improve the quality of this
manuscript. I am also indebted to Jörg Rössel, Robert Dur and Max van Lent for their thoughtful
feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. Their contributions were crucial in shaping the
direction and scope of this project. Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the late David Graeber,
who was a prolific scholar and activist. His intellectual curiosity and passion for social justice
inspired many, including myself. This work is dedicated to his memory.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
ORCID iD
Simon Walo https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4251-001X
Supplementary material
The supplementary material is available online with the article.
Notes
1. In addition, Graeber identifies ‘duct tapers’ whose job it is to ‘solve a problem that ought not
to exist’ (Graeber, 2018: 40) and ‘box tickers’ whose jobs exist ‘to allow an organization to
be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing’ (Graeber, 2018: 45). Both
of these types cannot be linked to specific occupations, however, and can therefore not be
identified in the data used here.

22 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
2. To ensure that the sample is representative, people who do not have access to the internet were
given a computer and internet access.
3. The five respondents in ‘farming, fishing and forestry’ may theoretically be included in the
analyses, especially when they are grouped together with other occupations. When analyzed
separately, however, standard errors are too large for meaningful interpretations. To keep the
sample constant, they are therefore excluded from all analyses. The nine respondents in ‘mili-
tary specific occupations’ must be excluded everywhere because they display no variation in
the dependent variable.
4. The AWCS dataset also includes a more detailed variable on occupations that distinguishes
between more than 200 occupations. However, they do not match well with Graeber’s BS
occupations and the number of cases per occupation is very low. For these reasons, it is pref-
erable to use the broader categories.
5. Perhaps computer and mathematical occupations are associated with being perceived as
socially useless since they often are what Graeber calls ‘duct tapers’ (see note 1).
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24 Work, Employment and Society 00(0)
Simon Walo is a research assistant and PhD student at the University of Zurich, where he is cur-
rently pursuing his doctoral degree in sociology. In his dissertation he addresses contradictory
evidence regarding the impact of technology on labour markets and the changing meaning of work.
Further, he is a member of the research team for the INVENT project, which examines the societal
values of culture in Europe. Finally, he also deals with broader aspects of digital transformation by
participating in the Excellence Program of the Digital Society Initiative at the University of Zurich.
Date submitted June 2022
Date accepted April 2023