Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “At the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people in every single place the world are still debating the answer.

There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are needless, and, tragically, they realize it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.

Graeber explores one in every of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (