Bullshit Jobs
A bullshit job is a concept created by David Graebner (1961 – 2020), who later wrote a book about it.
It's a job that is unnecessary, the worker simply pretends to have a purpose.
According to polls, around 40% of UK workers consider their jobs to fit this description.
A significant segment of workers now doubt that their jobs make “any sort of meaningful contribution to the world.”
I think there's a difference between "dig a hole and then fill it in" and "sit at a desk for 8 hours, tweaking UI to make this web page marginally more attractive". There's also a related concept (as illustrated by Office Space) of filling a seat and "working" for a short period of time.
Graebner argues that previously meaningful work can become a bullshit job though administrative work and managerialism, which he argues is especially prevalent in academia.
The expectation is that we all have a job simply to fill our time. The alternative is unfathomable: that we may enjoy leisure.
Expansion
The philosopher Raymond Geuss proposes expanding Graeber’s concept of “bullshit jobs” more widely, “so as to include even pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious jobs that people who perform them think are highly useful, which they might actually enjoy doing, and with which they might even strongly identify.” We might think of these as decadent jobs, serving no purpose beyond private profit or the maintenance of one’s own relative status over others.
See Also
How Dwarf Fortress Abandoned Capitalism and embraced Communism
Capitalism
Productivity
Mexican fisher