Ever met a Regional Paradigm Director? Or a Solutions Architect? The first of these job titles was generated by a ‘Bullshit Job Title’ algorithm online; the other is from an actual business card that landed on my desk a few days ago.

In Bullshit Jobs, Graeber examines the existence and proliferation of useless jobs and indeed entire sectors of the economy that, well, don’t really need to exist. His own research suggests that up to one third of us believe our own jobs do not need to be performed, and make no meaningful contribution to the world. How and when did this come to be the case? Is there a solution?

Graeber sets out to analyse and understand all aspects of the phenomenon of ‘bullshit jobs’ and the ‘bullshitisation’ of work, drawing on history, sociology, economics, philosophy, and religious studies to do so. He lays out a typology of bullshit jobs, and examines the structures that exist in the world to maintain and even reward such work. Graeber arguably relishes a little too much in the thrill of using a cheeky word like bullshit for what is otherwise a rigorously-presented concept. Likewise, his chapter sub-headings are clearly meant to be fun but are more often cumbersome three- or even four-line distractions, for example, ‘On Some Ways in Which the Current Form of Managerial Feudalism Resembles Classical Feudalism, and Other Ways in Which It Does Not’. But despite being at times convoluted, Bullshit Jobs is a highly interesting read and an important challenge to how we understand the workforce.

Reviewed by Gabby Bate