Bullshit Jobs

What a Bullshit Job Is

A bullshit job is not simply a hard job, a low-paid job, or an unpleasant job. It is a job that even the person doing it believes should not exist. If that job disappeared, nothing important would be lost, and in some cases things might even work better. That is different from a bad job that is still useful, such as cleaning, caregiving, or collecting trash. Those jobs may be exhausting or poorly paid, but they clearly help keep society running.

The clearest sign of a bullshit job is not only uselessness, but pretense. The worker must act as if the job matters, even when everyone involved quietly knows it does not. That gap between reality and performance creates a special kind of misery. It is not just boredom. It is the feeling of spending part of your life helping stage a lie.

One example comes from an information technology worker supporting military contractors in Germany. A simple task, like moving a computer a short distance, triggered layers of forms, approvals, rented cars, long drives, and subcontracted labor. What should have taken minutes instead consumed days and large sums of money. The worker was not confused about the waste. He understood perfectly well that the process existed mainly to keep the machine going.

These jobs are not limited to government offices, even though public bureaucracy is an easy target. Private companies create them too, often through outsourcing, middle management, and endless internal administration. At the same time that firms cut useful workers on the front line, they often expand the number of people handling reports, meetings, performance systems, and internal oversight. The result is a strange economy where many respected office jobs produce little except more office work.

Surveys in countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands suggest that a large share of workers believe their jobs do not make a meaningful contribution. The feeling is especially common in white-collar work. Nurses, mechanics, farmers, and cleaners may be frustrated by low pay or harsh conditions, but they usually know why their work matters. It is often managers, consultants, coordinators, and administrators who struggle to explain what good their role actually does.

This pattern has spread beyond obviously pointless jobs and into useful professions as well. Teachers, nurses, and other essential workers increasingly spend large parts of their day on paperwork, compliance tasks, and digital reporting that add little value. So the problem is not only that some jobs are useless. It is that useless tasks are swallowing more and more of the time that could be spent on useful work.