Our encounters with the direct labor of others, not to be confused with the labor embedded in the phone we swipe or the strawberry we eat, could in principle be mapped in starburst networks, thick and thin lines of varying lengths indicating intensity and frequency. We encounter people’s direct labor when they provide us with a service — the barista we engage with for ninety seconds a few mornings a week, the postal worker we pass on the sidewalk — or when they work alongside us, in our offices, stores, and warehouses. Some people’s labor, while essential to the demos, we rarely encounter, and if we do, the circumstances are likely to be dire. Sociologist Allison Pugh begins her new book, The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, with an account of this type of labor. Erin Nash, an apprentice chaplain at an East Coast hospital, is a person who we might meet on the worst day of our life — a day when our child, parent, or partner has a life-threatening operation or even dies.¹ Pugh describes an encounter Erin has with a patient who, terrified and enraged at the prospect of being intubated, screams out loud and clutches Erin’s hand when she offers it, pulling her close and clinging to her while he calms himself. Later he thanks Erin for connecting with him in that awful moment, for seeing and understanding his pain.

While we may fervently wish never to require the help of someone like Erin, Pugh argues that the work Erin does is emblematic of an increasingly important form of labor in our modern society: connective labor. Connective labor, labor that “involves ‘seeing’ the other and reflecting that understanding back,” has, Pugh contends, become an essential component of an increasing number of American jobs. Our encounters in the classroom, the doctor’s office, and the hair salon satisfy more than just direct needs. They generate “mutual purpose, dignity, understanding.” In these interactions, “we express and experience our humanity” — the “resonant meanings” that emerge, contributing to the broader social fabric.

In a moment marked by persistent dread about job loss and de-skilling as a result of rapid advances in digital automation and artificial intelligence, Pugh’s insistence that our society is generating new skills and capacities, or at least spreading them to new occupations, is bold and affirming. New ways of working, some of which involve acquiring new skills, have undoubtedly emerged over the past few decades. Bosses have used smartphones and apps to recalibrate a wide variety of occupations, and software and hardware engineers have been trained to make it all possible. These kinds of skills are not readily viewed as progress, however, or at least not progress for most workers, and perhaps not even for society. Instead Pugh describes the spread of a more valuable, quintessentially human skill set — one that, on the whole, benefits both individuals and society. Connective labor brings us together and creates a sense of belonging and meaning that is greater than the sum of encounters involved.