A little over 50 years ago, the American broadcaster  published an oral history based on interviews with 133 workers across the US. This was a time of automation and global competition, a new era of enormous change, and Terkel wanted to discover how the world of work might offer ordinary people a sense of purpose; of what he described as “daily meaning as well as daily bread”.

What he discovered is that there were people doing “good” jobs, sometimes performed with grace and beauty – the piano tuner, for example, the stone mason, the firefighter – but that most workers were trying merely to survive the day. As one of his interviewees told him: “Most of us… have jobs that are too small for our spirit.”

Terkel’s book – whose full title is _Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do_ – later spawned a Broadway musical, a graphic novel, and then  presented by Barack Obama.

Now it has inspired an examination of the world of work in the UK in the 2020s; one that is again based upon extensive interviews, across a landscape that has largely been deindustrialised. This too is published at a time when the workplace is being revolutionised, this time by artificial intelligence.

In _his book_, Charlie Colenutt aims, like Terkel, to discover the ways in which our employment can nourish us, or leave us drained. As in the US half a century ago, many people seem to suffer the latter. A panel beater says he aches all the time and has too little time for his children; a chef says most of his colleagues are alcoholics or drug addicts; an accountant laments the loneliness of working from home during lockdown: “I know everyone’s on LinkedIn posting a picture of their coffee with their dog at their feet, sun shining through the kitchen window. It looks like you’re having a nice morning but what are you like at 6pm when it’s gloomy and you haven’t spoken to anyone all day?”

Even a derivatives trader, paid a vast fortune in the City while still in his 20s, endures existential disquiet: “I struggle to see the point of my job. I think it doesn’t really need to be done. It basically serves only to make myself and my company’s shareholders richer. I’m totally checked-out, to be honest.”

> A chef says most of his colleagues are alcoholics or drug addicts; an accountant laments the loneliness of working from home during lockdown

While Terkel heard frequently how gruelling manual labour could be – “strictly muscle work”, as one steel mill employee put it – most of Colenutt’s 68 interviewees work in the service economy, and he encounters many complaints about mushrooming bureaucracy.

A midwife says that whenever she gives an expectant mother a back massage, she must fill in a form. A childminder has three filing cabinets in her kitchen – “and that’s before you go to my attic”. A construction site manager has 1,600 unread emails in his inbox. A church minister in Northern Ireland says he has less and less time to study his Bible, as “an awful lot of ministry today is like being an administrator”.

In this way, occupations that looked very different a generation ago are now coming to resemble one another. They also entail similarly increased workloads. A lawyer usually sends her last email at 2.30am. A primary school teacher, who was previously a soldier, says: “There were some tough times in the army, but I’ve never felt under more pressure. I’ve probably cried in front of my headteacher more than anyone else in my life. It was far less stressful in Afghanistan.”



Author Charlie Colenutt believes the mountains of paperwork generated today stem from corporate fears of failure.

Colenutt believes that the mountains of paperwork are being generated by organisations’ fears of failure: of being sued or publicly criticised by a regulator. As a consequence, workers are doing less of their actual work, instead spending their time inputting data, writing reports, and ticking boxes. Morale is sapped and staff turnover rises.

But he finds too that the joy and pride of work can be found in unexpected places. A food delivery rider says he is often exhausted and occasionally very wet, but that he loves cycling around London. “It’s a chance to see the sights. I’ve crossed Tower Bridge a hundred times. You feel a freedom on the bike. You are not strapped to a desk. That’s the best thing.”

A cleaner knows she is making a difference in her clients’ lives and says: “I get a real sense of fulfilment when I look back at a room I’ve cleaned. I think, oh yeah, lovely.”

Perhaps one of the most satisfied workers in Colenutt’s book is a joiner, who employs one apprentice and who finds that the work he delivers, and the training he gives, results in a life of deep contentment. “I don’t want a fleet of 10 vans,” he says. “I don’t want to be on a million pounds a year. I don’t want to be any higher than I am. I’m happy. Everything’s balanced nicely, work, social life, family, gym, and still time for other things.

“I know that what balances can easily topple over, but if that happens, I’ll deal with it.”

_Ian Cobain is the author of Anatomy of a Killing (Granta, £10.99)_

_Is This Working?: The Jobs We Do, Told by the People Who Do Them_ by Charlie Colenutt is published by Picador (£20). To support the _Guardian_ and _Observer_ order your copy at . Delivery charges may apply
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