Welcome to a golden age for workers

Almost everyone agreed that the mid-2010s were a terrible time to be a worker. David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, coined the term “bullshit jobs” to describe purposeless work, which he argued was widespread. With the recovery from the global financial crisis of 2007-09 taking time, some 7% of the labour force in the oecd club of mostly rich countries lacked work. Wage growth was weak and income inequality seemed to be rising inexorably.