Worshipping Jobs: How Mass Media's Fetishization of "Job Creators" Downplays the Spiritual Violence of Work

       "Since the beginning of our administration, the economy has added more than 1.5 million jobs," said President Joe Biden. "We’ve added ... more than a million private-sector jobs," claimed former President Donald Trump. With rhetoric that similarly echoes the narrative surrounding the "economy," jobs are a consistent and revolving theme within mainstream political discourse. Namely, it isn't uncommon to hear the media and/or politicians brag about "record-low" levels of unemployment, in which Americans are able to find a plethora of jobs that the free market deems "necessary." Unsurprisingly, the narratives around job creation, as parroted by the media, is a concept that warrants public trust by default, similar to the "economy." After all, more jobs equate to a good AND strong economy, right? However, if the "economy" is often used as a euphemism for corporate profits, what does that say about jobs? Does the creation of "millions of jobs" translate to the economic well-being of the working class? Well, for the most part, not really. The minimum wage is still $7.25/hr despite increases in worker productivity, rents are at an all-time high ($1,698), and over the past decade, "family premiums for employer-sponsored coverage have jumped by 47%." The point being is it simply isn't affordable to work a 9-5 job anymore, not to mention the spiritual violence that many of these jobs represent. In a world in which "37-40 percent of workers...[feel that] their jobs...[make] no meaningful contribution to society," I think we are long overdue for a conversation regarding how we (as a society) view jobs, However, for the purposes of this article, I intend to simply explore why the rhetoric surrounding "job creation" and "work" isn't what the media makes it out to be.

 

        As any serious economist would tell you, our current economic system is riddled with bureaucracy and "middle-men" that aren't actually needed, something that David Graeber describes in his book Bullshit Jobs. According to Graeber, bullshit jobs are jobs that are "so completely pointless, pernicious or of so little social value that, were they to disappear, it would either make no difference whatsoever, or the world might actually be a slightly better place." Ranging from employees guarding an empty museum room to copying tech requests and pasting them into a spreadsheet, much of the work that we engage in is not fulfilling or socially necessary. However, for a job to be bullshit, the person who has to perform it every day must be unable to "convince themselves there’s a good reason for them to be doing it." That being said, the "bullshitization" of work is applicable even to jobs that ARE considered socially necessary, meaning that a good chunk of time in these jobs is spent engaging in useless tasks that have no correlation with the job itself. This is especially true in education, in which teachers spend most of their time doing meaningless paperwork or spending needless time in unnecessary meetings. With my mom being an educator, I can personally attest to this phenomenon. Instead of doing library-related tasks (i.e. what she is paid to do), a large part of her day is spent either cataloging Chromebooks or involuntarily subbing for classes that aren't even hers. This does not pertain only to education. Ultimately, Graeber's conception of work is widely applicable to a good swath of the working class, who are forced into these psychologically oppressive jobs for longer hours in order to survive.

        The true crime of the "bullshitization" of work, at least to me, is that we could work significantly less if we simply engaged in self-directed, self-managed, and fulfilling jobs that *actually* contribute to society. However, this sentiment requires not only an inkling of class-consciousness that the media rigorously tries to obscure (for obvious reasons) but a challenge to the predominant "wage-labor = good" narrative that defines American work culture. Given that the media's primary purpose is to reinforce faith in political, social, and economic institutions, it comes as no surprise that such nuance is often left out of stories heralding politicians for their ability to create jobs. Therefore, As Graeber accurately points out, "our obsession with the moral value of work has blinded us to a social problem that is having absolutely disastrous effects on society, human happiness, and the planet itself." With this in mind, when politicians and the media parrot the creation of "millions of jobs" as an inherent force for good, we should ask ourselves the question: how many of these jobs are actually necessary? Does the working class (as a whole) benefit from these jobs, if not materially then psychologically? It's important, as students of political science, to evaluate these narratives as a whole and not take them at face value. Thus, instead of interpreting statements such as the "economy has added more than 1.5 million jobs," one could also interpret it as "now there are more bullshit jobs that force workers to work for longer hours for lower wages in order to provide a larger surplus value to the business class." This distinction, at least to me, is crucial in not only evaluating the nature of work but the purposes that the media serve as well. However, don't get it twisted. Just because I am critiquing the nature of work that the media *purposely* fails to address, it does not mean that I think that unemployment is a good thing. I simply want to point out that society needs to go beyond our modern conception of "work" in which labor itself is something that we look forward to and contributes to our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. The media, with its fetishization of bullshit jobs and its for-profit orientation, is diametrically opposed to the liberation of the working class, an unsurprising development given that its purpose is to manufacture the consent of the masses.