A make-work job is a job that has less immediate financial or little 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 Workfare is a governmental plan under which welfare recipients are required to accept public-service jobs or to participate in job training. Many countries around the world have adopted workfare (sometimes implemented as "work-first" policies) to ...

, 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).

Analysis

Some consider make-work jobs to be harmful when they provide very little practical experience or training for future careers. As a part of the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...

, the

Civil Works Administration The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was a short-lived job creation program established by the New Deal during the Great Depression in the United States to rapidly create mostly manual-labor jobs for millions of unemployed workers. The jobs were ...

(CWA) was in 1933 created as a stopgap measure to boost the economic relief provided by the

Federal Emergency Relief Administration The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Adm ...

and

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

. At its peak, the CWA employed 4,230,000 people; however, President Roosevelt was wary of the specter of corruption and accusations of

boondoggling A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations. Etymology "Boondoggle" was the name of the newspaper of the Roosevelt Troop of the Boy Sco ...

, and shut the CWA down after less than a year. Economists like

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

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.

Examples

Make-work jobs have been introduced during periods of high unemployment to provide as substitutes for regular jobs. In many European countries, social

welfare Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specificall ...

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 instill necessary workplace skills and values such as the importance of punctuality and responsibility. Many of the skills learned while doing make-work jobs help workers when applying for and doing regular jobs. 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. Attendants employed at full-serve gasoline stations in New Jersey and Oregon wherein drivers are not permitted to pump their own gas are often cited as examples of make-work jobs.https://fox59.com/news/national-world/oregon-new-jersey-consider-the-unthinkable-letting-people-pump-their-own-gas/

In popular culture

* In the novel ''

To Kill a Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' has become ...

'', Bob Ewell loses his New Deal make-work job, and blames

Atticus Finch Atticus Finch is a fictional character in Harper Lee's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of 1960, ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel '' Go Set a Watchman'', written in the mid-1950s but not pub ...

References

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Analysis

Examples

In popular culture

See also

References

Further reading