Bullshit jobs, wrote the late anthropologist David Graeber, are a “form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence”. Corporate lawyers, public relations consultants and administrators are among his examples. Whereas bin collectors and health workers have socially useful jobs. Without them, the world would fall into disarray.

The pandemic exposed the divide between bullshit and useful jobs by elevating “essential workers”. Despite the gloom of early lockdown, there was some solace in seeing mergers and acquisition lawyers put in their place (many rungs below supermarket shelf-stackers). 

A study published this summer unpicked bullshit jobs and suggested workers’ sense of uselessness may not be “a direct indication of the social value of that work”. Rather, it is “a symptom of bad management and toxic workplace cultures”. In the wrong environment, essential workers may see themselves as being in bullshit jobs, too.