Meaningful work

In our time of high unemployment, it is hard to say much about what kind of work is meaningful.  When so many people are out of work, even shit jobs have meaning.  In times like these, just being valued enough to be paid to do something beats the alternative of full rejection.  So this is perhaps a subject for better times, and a mere thought exercise in these hard times.

I know that there's a risk of appearance of elitism that runs with a discussion of what constitutes meaningful work, since it could seem intuitive to propose that low-end jobs are less meaningful.  But I think, to the limited extent I've thought about this, the claim of elitism can be dropped.  I remember the scene in Bonfire of the Vanities where the protagonist is unable to explain his Master of the Universe job to his young child.  I found that to be a poignant test of the meaningfulness of a job.  A janitor can easily explain to a child that he keeps a building clean.  But the novel's high-earning financial worker can't explain much beyond "I make a lot of money."

Making money is typically enough meaning for a worker, and that is ok for someone who is more family oriented than career oriented.  In that case, work is a means to an end--to support a family.  It probably is important that the worker doesn't compromise himself for the work.  But otherwise, work merely for pay isn't without respect.

There can be some simple tests of how meaningful your work is:

• Do you enjoy your work?
• If for some reason you could not do your work professionally, would you do it as a hobby?  Or if you were very wealthy and did not need the income, would you still continue your work in some form?
• Is your job compatible with your values?

I might want to think more about this.