IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp11927.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Socially Useless Jobs

Author

Listed:
  • Dur, Robert

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

  • van Lent, Max

    (Leiden University)

Abstract

It has been claimed that many workers in modern economies think that their job is socially useless, i.e. that it makes no or a negative contribution to society. However, the evidence so far is mainly anecdotal. We use a representative dataset comprising 100,000 workers from 47 countries at four points in time. We find that approximately 8% of workers perceive their job as socially useless, while another 17% are doubtful about the usefulness of their job. There are sizeable differences between countries, sectors, occupations, and age groups, but no trend over time. A vast majority of workers cares about holding a socially useful job and we find that they suffer when they consider their job useless. We also explore possible causes of socially useless jobs, including bad management, strict job protection legislation, harmful economic activities, labor hoarding, and division of labor.

Suggested Citation

  • Dur, Robert & van Lent, Max, 2018. "Socially Useless Jobs," IZA Discussion Papers 11927, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11927
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp11927.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nava Ashraf & Oriana Bandiera, 2017. "Altruistic Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 70-75, May.
    2. Michael Kosfeld & Susanne Neckermann & Xiaolan Yang, 2017. "The Effects Of Financial And Recognition Incentives Across Work Contexts: The Role Of Meaning," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 237-247, January.
    3. Bloom, Nicholas & Sadun, Raffaella & Lemos, Renata & Scur, Daniela & Van Reenen, John, 2014. "The new empirical economics of management," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58009, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Greg Kaplan & Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, 2018. "The Changing (Dis-)utility of Work," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 239-258, Summer.
    5. Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 503-530.
    6. Grant, Adam M. & Sonnentag, Sabine, 2010. "Doing good buffers against feeling bad: Prosocial impact compensates for negative task and self-evaluations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 13-22, January.
    7. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    8. Benjamin B. Lockwood & Charles G. Nathanson & E. Glen Weyl, 2017. "Taxation and the Allocation of Talent," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1635-1682.
    9. Ariely, Dan & Kamenica, Emir & Prelec, Drazen, 2008. "Man's search for meaning: The case of Legos," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 671-677, September.
    10. Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2018. "Prosocial Motivation and Incentives," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 10(1), pages 411-438, August.
    11. Roman Inderst & Marco Ottaviani, 2012. "Financial Advice," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 494-512, June.
    12. Patrick Francois & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2008. "Pro-social Motivation and the Delivery of Social Services," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 54(1), pages 22-54, March.
    13. George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller, 2015. "Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10534.
    14. Jeffrey Carpenter & Erick Gong, 2016. "Motivating Agents: How Much Does the Mission Matter?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 211-236.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joseph Lanfranchi & Mathieu Narcy, 2022. "How do prosocial motivation and performance‐related pay interact in the workplace context? Evidence from the non‐profit sector," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(3), pages 436-455, August.
    2. Maria Cotofan & Lea Cassar & Robert Dur & Stephan Meier, 2023. "Macroeconomic Conditions When Young Shape Job Preferences for Life," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(2), pages 467-473, March.
    3. Kesternich, Iris & Schumacher, Heiner & Siflinger, Bettina & Schwarz, Stefan, 2021. "Money or meaning? Labor supply responses to work meaning of employed and unemployed individuals," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    4. Prendergast, Canice, 2023. "Organizational design for making a difference," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    5. Vogel, Dominik & Willems, Jurgen, 2020. "The Effects of Making Public Service Employees Aware of Their Prosocial and Societal Impact: A Microintervention study," SocArXiv xatcn, Center for Open Science.
    6. Nikolova, Milena & Cnossen, Femke, 2020. "What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Tobias Wolf & Maria Metzing & Richard E. Lucas, 2022. "Experienced Well-Being and Labor Market Status: The Role of Pleasure and Meaning," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 691-721, September.
    8. Burbano, Vanessa & Padilla, Nicolas & Meier, Stephan, 2020. "Gender Differences in Preferences for Meaning at Work," IZA Discussion Papers 13053, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Rilke, Rainer Michael, 2020. "When Too Good Is Too Much: Social Incentives and Job Selection," IZA Discussion Papers 12905, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Bohnenberger, Katharina, 2022. "Is it a green or brown job? A Taxonomy of Sustainable Employment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    11. Gerold, Stefanie & Hoffmann, Maja & Aigner, Ernest, 2023. "Towards a critical understanding of work in ecological economics: A postwork perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    12. Wolfe, Marcus T. & Patel, Pankaj C., 2019. "Exploring the differences in perceptions of work importance and job usefulness to society between self-employed and employed individuals," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 12(C).
    13. Diane Pelly, 2022. "Worker well-being and quit intentions: is measuring job satisfaction enough?," Working Papers 202204, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    14. Md. Anwar Hossain & Crispin H. V. Cooper, 2021. "Spatial network analysis as a tool for measuring change in accessibility over time: Limits of transport investment as a driver for UK regional development," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 2124-2148, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vanessa, Mertins & Jeworrek, Sabrina & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2018. ""The Good News about Bad News": Feedback about Past Organisational Failure Bad ist Impact in Worker Productivity," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181644, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Nikolova, Milena & Cnossen, Femke, 2020. "What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Kampkötter, Patrick & Petters, Lea M. & Sliwka, Dirk, 2021. "Employee identification and wages – on the economics of “Affective Commitment”," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 608-626.
    4. Daniel Jones & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2018. "Paying for what kind of Performance? Performance Pay and Multitasking in Mission-Oriented Jobs," CESifo Working Paper Series 7156, CESifo.
    5. Dur, Robert & van Lent, Max, 2018. "Serving the public interest in several ways: Theory and empirics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 13-24.
    6. Vanessa Mertins & Christian Walter, 2021. "In absence of money: a field experiment on volunteer work motivation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(3), pages 952-984, September.
    7. Jones, Daniel B. & Tonin, Mirco & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Winichakul, K. Pun, 2023. "Paying for what kind of performance? Performance pay, multitasking, and sorting in mission-oriented jobs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 480-507.
    8. Alex Bell & Raj Chetty & Xavier Jaravel & Neviana Petkova & John Van Reenen, 2019. "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 647-713.
    9. Canh Thien Dang & Trudy Owens, 2024. "Non-governmental organizations’ motivation to diversify: self-interest or operation-related? Evidence from Uganda," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 561-584.
    10. Sun-Moon Jung & Jae Yong Shin, 2022. "Social Performance Incentives in Mission-Driven Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(10), pages 7631-7657, October.
    11. Stein, Caroline & Untertrifaller, Anna, 2020. "The effect of ethical responsibility on performance," MPRA Paper 99176, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Non, Arjan & Rohde, Ingrid & de Grip, Andries & Dohmen, Thomas, 2022. "Mission of the company, prosocial attitudes and job preferences: A discrete choice experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    13. Masuch, Klaus & Anderton, Robert & Setzer, Ralph & Benalal, Nicholai, 2018. "Structural policies in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 210, European Central Bank.
    14. Brice Corgnet, 2018. "Rac(g)e Against the Machine? Social Incentives When Humans Meet Robots," Post-Print halshs-01984467, HAL.
    15. Corgnet, Brice & Hernán-González, Roberto & Mateo, Ricardo, 2023. "Peer effects in an automated world," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    16. Lea Cassar, 2014. "Optimal contracting with endogenous project mission," ECON - Working Papers 150, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2014.
    17. Sivropoulos-Valero, Anna Alexandra, 2021. "Education and economic growth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114434, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Nicola Bianchi & Michela Giorcelli, 2020. "Scientific Education and Innovation: From Technical Diplomas to University Stem Degrees [The Social Origins and IQ of Inventors]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2608-2646.
    19. Jäger, Simon & Heining, Jörg, 2019. "How Substitutable Are Workers? Evidence from Worker Deaths," MPRA Paper 109757, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Jan 2019.
    20. Cao, Yu & Capra, C. Mónica & Su, Yuxin, 2023. "Do prosocial incentives motivate women to set higher goals and improve performance?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    sin industries; job protection legislation; management quality; job search; job satisfaction; work motivation; labor hoarding; division of labor;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets
    • J8 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11927. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.