{"id":44123,"date":"2023-08-03T16:34:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T20:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/opinion-1-in-5-u-s-workers-think-their-jobs-are-socially-useless\/"},"modified":"2023-08-03T16:34:25","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T20:34:25","slug":"opinion-1-in-5-u-s-workers-think-their-jobs-are-socially-useless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=44123","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: 1 in 5 U.S. workers think their jobs are socially useless"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"js-article__body\" itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-sbid=\"WP-MKTW-0002361770\" role=\"document\">\n<div data-layout=\"inline\n                \" data-layout-mobile=\"\" class=\"\n          media-object\n          type-InsetPullQuote\n            inline\n    scope-web|mobileapps\n  article__inset\n          article__inset--type-InsetPullQuote\n            article__inset--inline\n  \"><\/p>\n<div class=\"wsj-article-pullquote article__inset__pullquote \">\n<p class=\"pullquote-content article__inset__pullquote__quote\">\n        <span class=\"l-qt article__inset__pullquote__mark--left\">\u201c<\/span>Mrs. Claypool: Mr. Driftwood! Three months ago you promised to put me into society. In all that time you\u2019ve done nothing but draw a very handsome salary!Otis B. Driftwood: You think that\u2019s nothing? How many men do you suppose are drawing a handsome salary nowadays?<span class=\"r-qt article__inset__pullquote__mark--right\">\u201d<\/span>\n      <\/p>\n<p>        <small><br \/>\n          <span class=\"inset-author article__inset__pullquote__author\">\u2014  \u201cA Night At The Opera,\u201d 1935<\/span><br \/>\n        <\/small><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>From the \u201cOffice Space\u201d to \u201cThe Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,\u201d and from Marx Brothers movies to Joseph Heller \u2018s \u201cCatch-22,\u201d writers and satirists have long made fun of the jobs in modern society that seem to have absolutely no social purpose or benefit to humanity whatsoever.<\/p>\n<p>Now we have an actual head count \u2014 and it\u2019s a doozy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"paywall\">\n<p>One U.S. worker in five confesses in a new academic study that they think their job adds no value to the world. That\u2019s the share who say their job \u201crarely\u201d or \u201cnever\u201d gives them \u201cthe feeling of making a positive impact on [their] community and society\u201d or \u201cthe feeling of doing useful work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn total, more than 19% of all respondents \u2026 perceive their jobs as socially useless,\u201d writes University of Zurich sociology researcher Simon Walo in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal Work, Employment and Society.<\/p>\n<p>This includes nearly one-third of those in jobs involving transportation or moving things, and, surprisingly, of those in occupations involved in making or using material things, from carpenters and butchers to aerospace engineers. Sales and marketing jobs, along with office and administrative jobs, also scored very poorly.<\/p>\n<p>Doctors, nurses and teachers were at the other end of the spectrum, with fewer than 5% of teachers saying they thought their jobs were socially useless.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, fewer than 25% of those in business and finance, and fewer than 20% of lawyers and managers think they are adding no value.<\/p>\n<p>Money managers, stockbrokers, research analysts and \u201cstrategists\u201d were not broken out as a separate group \u2014 more\u2019s the pity.<\/p>\n<p>The numbers are drawn from a study of the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey, itself a part of the long-running RAND American Life Panel, a nationally representative group of people who take part in regular surveys. The findings are based on responses from 1,800 people.<\/p>\n<p>Walo, the study\u2019s author, was testing a theory thrown out a decade ago by the late David Graeber, an anthropologist, radical and professor at the London School of Economics. Graeber argued that in the modern economy, some or many jobs are \u201cbulls\u2014 jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed,\u201d Graeber wrote back then. He sought to explain why everyone was still working so hard, even though society could now satisfy all its basic needs with a tiny percentage of effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the \u2018service\u2019 sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations,\u201d Graeber wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently this idea was so new to academics, publishers and the commentariat that Graeber even got a book deal out of it. It isn\u2019t new to anyone who\u2019s actually worked for a living in any kind of bureaucracy. Or to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with popular culture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat would ya say you do here?\u201d consultant Bob Slydell asks product manager Tom Smykowski in the 1999 movie \u201cOffice Space.\u201d Smykowski struggles to find an answer. <\/p>\n<p>English humorist Douglas Adams, author of the celebrated science-fiction satire \u201cThe Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy,\u201d imagined that Earth had been populated by all the useless people from another planet, who were tricked into leaving by everyone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And it was about 50 years ago that humorist Art Buchwald came up with the theory that so many people were doing make-work jobs that there was only one person left in America who knew how to fix anything mechanical.<\/p>\n<p>Walo\u2019s study finds two things: The first is that some \u2014 or many \u2014 people really do perform jobs they consider to be socially useless. The other is that even people in useful jobs are likely to feel useless if they end up doing boring, repetitive work. This may explain why many in so-called \u201cproductive occupations\u201d give their jobs the thumbs-down, even though they\u2019re among the few people actually doing something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also read: <\/strong>Companies that took a \u2018leap of faith\u2019 with a four-day workweek saw improved productivity \u2014 and held fewer boring meetings<\/p>\n<p><strong>And:<\/strong> Switching jobs isn\u2019t a surefire way to get a big pay raise anymore \u2014 think twice before you jump ship<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/1-in-5-u-s-workers-think-their-jobs-are-socially-useless-9b3b0dd1?mod=personal-finance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cMrs. Claypool: Mr. Driftwood! Three months ago you promised to put me into society. In all that time you\u2019ve done nothing but draw a very handsome salary!Otis B. Driftwood: You think that\u2019s nothing? How many men do you suppose are drawing a handsome salary nowadays?\u201d \u2014 \u201cA Night At The Opera,\u201d 1935 \u00a0 From the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-44123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Opinion: 1 in 5 U.S. workers think their jobs are socially useless | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cMrs. Claypool: Mr. Driftwood! 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