Outside InWhy chance to offload BS jobs is an upside to Covid-19 pandemic

Name: ‘The fear is always there’, says Indonesian doctor working on Covid-19 front line
Uploaded: 2021-09-03T12:30:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 46 s
Description: ‘The fear is always there’, says Indonesian doctor working on Covid-19 front line

There is a tectonic shift occurring in labour markets worldwide as we reassess jobs and which ones are actually worthwhile

Discovering and deleting non-essential jobs might play an important role in improving productivity as the world emerges from recession

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Staff at a pizza restaurant in London, Britain, working on August 17. Of the millions of jobs that were lost or suspended through the past 18 months, how many will return and how many are lost forever? Photo: EPA-EFE

David Dodwell

Published: 8:30pm, 3 Sep 2021

As economies worldwide start to recover from the medical, economic and social shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, some uncomfortable questions have emerged.

Of the millions of jobs that were lost or suspended through the past 18 months, how many will return and how many are lost forever? How many will take a new form? And how many were exposed as what the late anthropologist David Graeber famously called “bulls*** jobs”?

One thing ought to be certain. The length and gravity of the pandemic disruption – which could drag on into 2023 if Delta and other variants continue to play havoc with plans to restore life to normal – have been long enough to raise awareness of which jobs are truly meaningful.

The economic trauma faced by so many companies worldwide must already have prompted many to eliminate non-essential jobs. As many have been forced to reckon with which jobs matter, some have already asked whether our societies can afford to have people doing work that does not matter.

Our utter reliance on underappreciated frontline workers has already triggered a reshuffling of priorities.

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‘The fear is always there’, says Indonesian doctor working on Covid-19 front line

In 2013, Graeber threw a cat among pigeons with his article “On the Phenomenon of Bulls*** Jobs: A Work Rant”. He created such a storm that his article was worked up into the bestselling 2018 book Bulls*** Jobs: A Theory.