Art Experiment to Hire Employee to Do Almost Nothing

A Swedish experiment will be offering one person a lifetime employment doing almost nothing. This full-time job will involve only one task—to punch in and out of work at the Korsvägen [kosh-VEH-gen] train station, which will open in 2026. In doing so, the worker will turn the station lights on and off. Between the start and end of the shift, the employee will be allowed to do anything except to take another job. The employee will be paid a hefty salary of around $2,320 a month and will get benefits such as a yearly wage increase, vacations, and a pension. He or she can resign anytime but will be immediately replaced by another. This is an art experiment conceptualized by Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. The two artists won Public Art Agency Sweden and Swedish Transport Administration’s train station design contest for being innovative and humorous. Instead of creating a visual art to decorate the station, the artists came up with this experiment to offer a different perspective of employment and the employee. According to the artists, it is likely that human workers will become unnecessary at work in the future due to artificial intelligence and automation. The experiment aims to discover the growth and productivity—or the lack thereof—of a worker who will be subjected to severe work inactivity. To sustain the experiment, Goldin and Senneby invested the prize money worth around $750,000; they also set up a foundation, called Eternal Employment, so that the fund will not be taxed. Through these, there will be enough money to pay the employee for 120 years or a lifetime.