Pieter processed address changes for a large insurance company. Predictable, straightforward work. Useful and important — for him and for his employer. Until customers could submit their own address changes online. After that, there was no suitable work left for Pieter.
Now Pieter has “a certain distance from the labour market.” But has Pieter drifted away from the labour market, or has the labour market drifted away from Pieter?
We treat efficiency as though it were a law of nature. As though it is self-evident that work disappears the moment a machine can do it more cheaply. But that is a choice. And every choice has winners and losers.
Pieter’s work did not become unnecessary. Address changes still need to be processed — only now a system does it. His work was optimised away. The question is not only can technology take over this work, but also: should we want it to? And if we do, what do we offer Pieter?
With the arrival of AI, this pattern is accelerating. Not only administrative work is disappearing, but also what we until recently called “knowledge work.” What remains is largely supervision: maintaining oversight, correcting course, making judgements. Senior-level work.
The labour market is not shrinking as a result, but it is narrowing. The broad base of executional work is contracting. What remains is a top tier of knowledge workers and a growing bottom layer of insecure, poorly paid work. The unemployment figure does not tell that story. It is also about the quality of work. About dignity.
There was nothing wrong with Pieter’s work. It was predictable and manageable. He was good at it, and it gave him a place in an organisation, in society. That is a basic human need.
We have lost the ability to value that kind of work. Work that is not “smart,” not “innovative,” not “disruptive.” In a culture obsessed with optimisation, there is ever less room for it. But paid work is more than an economic instrument. It is how people participate in society. When that pillar falls away, more falls away than income alone.
Hence a plea for messy imperfection. For a labour market that deliberately leaves room for people. That does not optimise everything. That accepts that human labour is sometimes less efficient, and is fine with that.
Messy imperfection means: work that keeps a place for Pieter, even if a system could do it faster. A society that values care work. Care for people, for the community, for nature. Not always the cheapest choice, not always the fastest. But perhaps the most human one.
Maybe it is time for the labour market to come back to the people. Messy and imperfect. But with room for everyone.