Historically it was exceptionally common to grow unproductive jobs up to the limit that the economy could support e.g. the Edo era of Japan. It's quite plausible/likely that part of the industrial revolutions magic was that economic growth outpaced the economies ability to add unproductive jobs.

Note that by unproductive jobs I'm specifically refferring to what could be called BS jobs. Jobs that were previously done by one person, but are now done by 10 people without an increase in measurable output.

> Jobs that were previously done by one person, but are now done by 10 people without an increase in measurable output.

Is there any data to support this claim?

Good luck trying to get an organization with BS jobs to competently implement a program that can deliver that kind of data. You're going to run into selection bias right of the gate, and then after that, you need to worry about the reliability of the data that you do get.

The key name to attach to your queries when trying to research this is "Graeber".

> Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs > David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs theory’ has generated a great deal of academic and public interest. This theory holds that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value. Despite generating clear testable hypotheses, this theory is not based on robust empirical research. We, therefore, use representative data from the EU to test five of its core hypotheses. Although we find that the perception of doing useless work is strongly associated with poor wellbeing, our findings contradict the main propositions of Graeber’s theory. The proportion of employees describing their jobs as useless is low and declining and bears little relationship to Graeber’s predictions. Marx’s concept of alienation and a ‘Work Relations’ approach provide inspiration for an alternative account that highlights poor management and toxic workplace environments in explaining why workers perceive paid work as useless.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211015067

It seems like you're trying to make a point about some altogether different topic, probably inferring some intent on my part based on a non-literal reading of what I wrote. (For example, that I'm personally endorsing Graeber. Hard to say, really, because you yourself didn't really say anything.) The literal reading of my comment is the correct one.

I said the relevant name when trying to turn up data would be to search for "Graeber"—which, as your comment indicates, is correct.

I don’t understand this sort of explanation. A “tacit admission” by who? “The economy” does not actually take actions, and definitely doesn’t have objectives; it just describes the broad system resulting from many individual agents.

Are you suggesting that corporate VPs hire managers with a goal of distributing money unequally so their products get sold? That seems like a huge stretch - they benefit so little in that way from their individual hiring decisions.

Are you suggesting that there is an “invisible hand” which pushes systems towards hiring do-nothing managers, because companies that don’t get outcompeted? I don’t see how that would happen - it seems like the opposite would occur.

> Are you suggesting that there is an “invisible hand” which pushes systems towards hiring do-nothing managers, because companies that don’t get outcompeted?

Not the OP but in a sense that's what happens, yes, even though I wouldn't use that "invisible hand" metaphor (which I personally find it a little over-used) but more like the "BS-jobs class system" (composed of most of the C-execs, of most middle-managers, of some HR and marketing people) making sure it is successful at reproducing itself.

I’m still confused. What do you mean when you say the “system makes sure?” I have the same issue as before - I don’t think of systems as having intent or “making sure” of anything. That might be a metaphor around a mechanism or feedback loop - what is that mechanism?