New article: BS jobs in BS industries

I have a new article out in The Week, discussing the phenomenon of "bullshit jobs", as postulated by David Graeber. Excerpts:

Back in August, the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber wrote an article for Strike!Magazine entitled "Bullshit Jobs." Graeber asked why we were still working so hard, despite being so much richer than in ages past. Where was the utopia of leisure that we were promised?...As you might expect, Graeber's article was thoroughly panned by most of the economists who even paid attention. But Graeber is on to something. Though I heavily doubt that many of our jobs represent a diabolic plot by our overlords to keep us in chains, it seems clear that many Americans no longer understand how their work creates value... 

According to Econ 101, people are supposed to get paid for the exact value they create....[But w]hat if your employer itself isn't adding value?...I suspect that many Americans these days wonder how much of their paycheck comes from value-added work, and how much comes from "rent."... 

Finance takes up fully 8 percent of our economy, up from less than 3 percent in 1950. But is our finance industry giving us anything now that it wasn't back then?... 

If finance is big, health care is gargantuan. The health-care sector takes up nearly one-fifth of our entire economy — far more than in other countries — and this share is climbing fast, as costs continue to rise. But despite this orgy of spending, we have little to show in the way of actual health... 

Finally, we have the education sector, which at 5.7 percent of GDP is also a big deal...Does college really train students with the skills and life experiences they need to be productive? Or is it just a hideously expensive way of proving to potential employers that you're smart and hard-working?... 

Together, just these three industries — finance, health care, and education — represent almost a third of America's economy... 

Obviously, we need all of them in some form: Without a finance industry, businesses couldn't launch or expand; without a health-care industry, we'd live horrible lives; and without education, we'd be unsuited for modern work. But the question is whether these industries, as a whole, create enough value to justify the huge amounts we spend on them. Because if they don't, then every American who works in finance or health care or education has to wonder whether his or her job is a "BS job."

Read the whole thing here!