IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fosoec/v55y2026i2p221-235.html

Shall Automation Create Artificial Jobs?

Author

Listed:
  • Tadas Šarapovas
  • Marius Kušlys
  • Vincentas Vobolevičius

Abstract

In the following pages, we review the current research on automation’s effect on the labor market and consider incentives for Left-wing governments to create artificial employment as a politico-economic response to job displacement. We derive our notion of artificial employment from Graeber’s concept of ‘bullshit jobs’ with one important difference—artificial employment generates a sense of purpose and meaning by resonating with a grand political-ideological narrative. We propose reasons for Left-wing governments to support creation of artificial jobs for twin purposes of addressing labor market implications of automation and stemming political disengagement of traditionally left-wing electorates.

Suggested Citation

  • Tadas Šarapovas & Marius Kušlys & Vincentas Vobolevičius, 2026. "Shall Automation Create Artificial Jobs?," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(2), pages 221-235, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:fosoec:v:55:y:2026:i:2:p:221-235
    DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2024.2384928
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07360932.2024.2384928
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/07360932.2024.2384928?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:taf:fosoec:v:55:y:2026:i:2:p:221-235. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RFSE20 .

    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.