The myth of adult daycare office jobs: no evidence of a bubble

There is no evidence of a conspiracy: high salaries in certain office jobs reflect a shortage of qualified candidates and productivity, not an artificial inflation of employment. The daycare comparison is a rhetorical exaggeration with no empirical backing.

## The post that compares the office to a daycare center

A post on X, accompanied by an image, captures the frustration of part of the population: "It really is just daycare," meaning that certain office jobs are nothing more than adult daycare. The message that opens the debate goes further, speaking of an "artificial inflation of jobs that provide no real value to society," with salaries that, according to its author, are five times those of a bricklayer. It is a claim circulating without any data to back it up. There is no study showing that these positions are created to pad payrolls or that companies finance them with specific credit lines.

## High salaries and productivity: what the evidence says

The pay gap between a bricklayer and an executive is neither new nor unique to any one country. In Spain, the average gross annual salary is around **27,000 euros** according to the latest Wage Structure Survey by the INE (Spain's statistics institute), published in **2023** with data from **2021**. A bricklayer can earn around **20,000 euros** a year, while an executive position exceeds **60,000**. That difference reflects responsibility, specialization and the supply of candidates, not a scheme. Labor productivity per hour worked in Spain grew **0.8%** in **2023** compared with the previous year, according to Eurostat, a modest figure that does not point to a bubble of unproductive jobs.

## The X case and layoffs as an argument

The post cites **Elon Musk** and his decision to lay off most of Twitter's workforce after buying the company in **2022**. It is true that the company cut its workforce from about **7,500** employees to fewer than **2,000** within months. It is also true that X is still operating. But it does not trinc that the eliminated positions were generally dispensable or that other companies should copy the model. The platform has faced declines in advertising revenue and occasional technical problems since then, as reported by outlets such as Reuters. A mass layoff is not a controlled experiment on the value of office work.

## What lies behind the frustration with white-collar jobs

The complaint about jobs that consist of "using PowerPoint and Zoom" taps into a real debate about the usefulness of certain intermediate positions. Economist **David Graeber** popularized the term "bullshit jobs" in **2018** to describe jobs that those holding them consider unnecessary. It is a sociological hypothesis, not an economic law. There are no official figures quantifying how many positions are dispensable. What the data do show is that employment in professional and administrative services has grown in recent decades in advanced economies, according to the OECD. Attributing that growth to a conspiracy requires evidence no one has provided.