Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters.

He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history and proposes unions and universal basic income as a potential solution.

[2] While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, the pointlessness of the work grates at their humanity and creates a "profound psychological violence".

In companies, the rise of service sector jobs owes less to economic need than to "managerial feudalism", in which employers need underlings in order to feel important and maintain competitive status and power.

[4] One solution that is offered by many is the idea of a universal basic income, which would consist of a livable benefit paid to all people regardless of their status so that they may work at their leisure.

[13] A review in The Times praises the book's academic rigor and humor, especially in some job examples, but altogether felt that Graeber's argument was "enjoyably overstated".

Using data from the EU-conducted European Working Conditions Survey, the study found that a low and declining proportion of employees considered their jobs to be "rarely" or "never" useful.

However, the study did confirm that feeling useless in one's job was correlated to poor psychological health and with higher rates of depression and anxiety.

The authors suggest that toxic management and work culture may lead individuals to feel that they are not realizing their true potential, regardless of whether or not their job is actually useful.

In addition, the survey shows that the occupations pointed out by Graeber are in fact most strongly perceived as socially useless, after controlling for working conditions.