Alternatively how much of our labor force is working in useless jobs? Aka jobs that just exist because people need a job to survive?
The reality is that business owners always want to make as much profit as possible, so they're never going to intentionally or knowingly pay labor for something that is useless, money that would otherwise go straight into their pocket. Sure there are some inefficiencies in the chain and a subset of managers trying to expand headcount unnecessarily because of office politics, but owners and board members are incentivized to eliminate that as much as possible because, you know, profit.
The only plausible spots for "bullshit jobs" are in government and in endowment-funded academia, where for various political reasons, effective oversight of costs is missing in certain scenarios. Usually that's a temporary phenomenon, as eventually a "nosy" journalist (or whistleblower) reveals a bunch of money is being wasted, and political pressure builds to reform that and stop wasting taxpayers' or donors' money.
You should read Graeber’s book sometime.
There are jobs that are useless but still benefit business owners financially. Graeber gives the example of a receptionist at a small firm. The firm had so few callers and visitors that the receptionist was totally unnecessary and sat idle most of the time.
Why did they hire her? If the members of the firm answered the phone themselves, they would not be taken seriously. Every serious firm has a receptionist to answer the phone, so they felt they had to hire one. She was essentially there as decoration.
looks are sometimes not unimportant nor useless. It's only the hacker mindset that thinks otherwise. "Normal" people do put some importance on appearances. Therefore, it's not useless.
but why is there an expectation that they get anything more than a paycheque out of it? It's called a job for a reason.
while a good moral argument, the world has not reached a point where such outcomes can be had. At some point in the future, when there's post-scarcity for all basic resources, then it would be possible that people shouldn't have to justify their own shelter or food.
That’s just the lizard brain mode of thinking. The person you paid $5k to redo your roof isn’t more deserving of the money because they spent two weeks on it instead of one. You’re both better off if they get it done faster.
My company went down to 80% time for 100% salary and every metric we use for productivity didn’t change one bit. I have no doubt we could drop another day down to 60% and still have hit all our targets. And anyone who actually works knows why, because the time off isn’t cutting into working time, it’s cutting into bullshit time.
And valuation has nothing to do with headcount, that's not how stock market analysts work. They look at revenue and costs and growth. The higher salaries are because of increased headcount, the higher costs are and therefore a lower valuation.
If it only takes you a few hours to do the thing the boss hired you for, you can bet they're going to find some more productive work for you real quick. In any business, there's virtually always more profitable work to be done that there are employees to do it, so it's not difficult.
For example in the construction industry barely any heavy machinery is used - it's cheaper to have labourers do the work than it is to rent machines. In road reconstruction you will see men digging the road by hand, then women carrying the rubble away somewhere with small buckets.
It defines them this way: "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
It goes further and defines various types of thse jobs, with examples for each. Those are included in the Wikipedia article.
"As a potential solution, Graeber suggests universal basic income, a livable benefit paid to all, without qualification, which would let people work at their leisure."
I think the 'without qualification' part is really important, so that there is no incentive NOT to work, and no stigma attached to receiving the money. Just give it to everybody and otherwise leave them alone.