Ok, but then there's a nasty question: why do employers not choose to create high-value jobs doing high-value work? Wouldn't this indicate an economy with stagnant or declining productivity-per-hour?
Record graduate influx lifts China’s youth jobless rate to 17.9% in July 2026 - https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3364538/r... - August 19th, 2026 ("China’s youth jobless rate climbed to 17.9 per cent in July, as a record wave of university graduates enters an already crowded labour market, prompting Beijing to step up employment support. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, rose 3 percentage points from 14.9 per cent in June – the last of three straight months of contraction – according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The rate last July was 17.8 per cent and it then climbed to 18.9 per cent the following month – the highest level since Beijing revised its methodology to exclude students in December 2023")
India's young are more educated than ever. So why are so many jobless? - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17841zez8wo | https://archive.today/sitRv - March 19th, 2026 ("Start with the headline number: 367 million young people between the ages of 15 and 29 - the largest youth population in the world, and making up a third of India's working-age population. Of them, 263 million are not in education and constitute the potential workforce.")
State of Working India 2026 - https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/media/resources/SWI/SWI-... ("Nearly 40% of graduates aged 15-25 - and 20% of those aged 25-29 - are jobless, far higher than among the less educated, the report finds. Only a small share secure stable, salaried jobs within a year.")
HN Search: bullshit jobs - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Well that doesn't seem like a problem of "elite overproduction". Elite overproduction proposes that there exists a specific glut of extractive elites, rather than a general glut of productive labor. This sounds more like a general glut of labor, because vast masses of people aren't being absorbed into other, more productive non-elite jobs that ought, under such a hypothesis, to exist.