McJob

McJob is American slang for a low-pay, dead-end, mindless job. The term comes from the fast-food restaurant McDonalds, but applies to any low-status job where little training is required and the worker's activities are tightly regulated. Most perceived McJobs are in the service industry, particularly fast food and retail sales.

The term is used to emphasize the fact that many good middle class jobs in the US are being eliminated, either due to productivity gains or by exporting the job to a third-world country. For example, manufacturing, call-center, accounting, and computer programming jobs are being lost in the US, and being replaced with McJobs, frustrating many people who used to work in these industries. These displaced workers spent many years gaining specialized education, training, and experience, and don't want to start over at the bottom rung in a new industry; many older workers may have no choice but to take a McJob, because an employer will prefer to hire someone right out of college for an entry level job.

The word McJob was recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.