Make-work job
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A make-work job is a job that has less immediate financial or few benefit at all to the economy than the job costs to support. It may also have no benefit. Make-work jobs are similar to workfare, but are publicly offered on the job market and have otherwise normal employment requirements (workfare jobs, in contrast, may be handed out to a randomly selected applicant or have special requirements such as continuing to search for a non-workfare job).
Criticism and analysis[]
Some consider make-work jobs to be harmful when they provide very little practical experience or training for future careers.[1]
As a part of the New Deal, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was in 1933 created as a stopgap measure to boost the economic relief provided by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Public Works Administration. At its peak, the CWA employed 4,230,000 people; however, President Roosevelt was wary of the specter of corruption and accusations of boondoggling, and shut the CWA down after less than a year.[2] Economists like Milton Friedman considered the programs like the CCC and WPA as justified as a temporary response to an emergency. Friedman gave Roosevelt considerable credit for relieving immediate distress and restoring confidence.[3]
Examples[]
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Make-work jobs have been introduced during periods of high unemployment to provide as substitutes for regular jobs. In many European countries, social welfare systems provide cash transfers to those who are unable to secure employment. These programs often require the recipient to undertake job training, internships, or job rotations. Make-work jobs can have the benefit of giving workers the chance of meeting new people and learning how to work with others. Such jobs can also help workers learn the importance of coming to work on time and taking responsibility for their actions.
Many of the skills learned while doing make-work jobs help workers when applying for and doing regular jobs.[4] Several make-work jobs that were created in Denmark in 2014 were gardening, cleaning up of beaches and sidewalks, reading to the elderly or disabled, washing toys at day care, working with local bike programs, and counting cars.[5]
In formerly Warsaw Pact countries make-work jobs are commonly caused by the state's deliberate manipulations to conceal unemployment rates and alter the country's unfavourable statistics (especially for international propaganda purposes), as was a common practice there and then.[6][7][8][9] Especially in those countries, it is often referred to as agrarian or hidden unemployment since it often occurred in agricultural sectors, mostly in rural areas.[10][11] It was commonly done by increasing the number of employees, which did not increase the production capacity (bureaucratic fiction of creating fake vacancies on paper for people with whom the powers that be did not know what to do, how to utilise their potential workforce - but not admitting to that inability, and paying out the diminutive wages for them to pretend to work and remain silent, as opposed to officially listing them as unemployed and paying out unemployment welfare benefits), thus rendering the overall productivity close to zero.[12][13] There are no official statistics about the scale of the problem due to its very nature, but it in affected countries it is considered to be one of the major reasons for the unsustainability of the past system and the economic crisis leading to the common people's strikes, which in turn later on led to governments responding with martial law state in places like Poland, and the eventual downfall of USSR and Soviet occupation over the rest of the subjugated states under the Warsaw Pact.[14]
In popular culture[]
- In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Bob Ewell loses his New Deal make-work job, and blames Atticus Finch.
See also[]
- Bullshit Jobs
- Busy work
- Federal assistance
- Lump of labour fallacy
References[]
- ^ Peter Doeringer, B. Vermeulen, Jobs and Training in the 1980s, Boston Studies in Applied Economics, Springer, 1981, ISBN 9780898380620, p. 196
- ^ David Edwin Harrell; et al. (2005). Unto A Good Land: A History Of The American People. Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. 902–. ISBN 0802837182.
- ^ Milton Friedman; Rose D. Friedman (1981). Free to Choose. Avon Books. p. 85. ISBN 0-380-52548-8.
- ^ "Arbejdsløse skal fjerne hundelorte". 2013-12-22.
- ^ "Nyttejob-wilke_adw.eps". 18 January 2014.
- ^ https://www.gowork.pl/poradnik/4/kariera/bezrobocie-utajone-co-to-jest-definicja-i-przyklady/
- ^ "Ukryci bezrobotni w PRL-u | poloniusz". 11 August 2014.
- ^ "W PRL-u nie było bezrobotnych... Więc skąd się wzięli?". 3 June 2014.
- ^ "Skala i struktura bezrobocia w Polsce". 23 October 2016.
- ^ "Bezrobocie ukryte - Encyklopedia Gazety Prawnej". forsal.pl. 15 December 2015. Retrieved 2019-02-05.
- ^ "Skala i struktura bezrobocia w Polsce". 23 October 2016.
- ^ "Skala i struktura bezrobocia w Polsce". 23 October 2016.
- ^ "W PRL-u nie było bezrobotnych... Więc skąd się wzięli?". 3 June 2014.
- ^ https://historia.org.pl/2010/05/23/rozpad-bloku-komunistycznego-upadek-zsrr-i-zjednoczenie-niemiec/
Further reading[]
- Graeber, David (August 2013). On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs
- On "bullshit jobs": Understanding seemingly meaningless work (August 2013), The Economist
- Massey, Alana. The Cult of Work (July 2015), Hazlitt
- Employment classifications
- Welfare economics
- Social programs