Swedish govt ‘art project’ will pay 1 person $2,320/month to do nothing for the rest of their life

An art installation in Sweden will pay one “employee” a monthly salary for the rest of their lives to do whatever they wish, or nothing at all, in a project already being dubbed as “stupidity” and “a waste of taxpayers money.”

“The position holds no duties or responsibilities, other than that it should be carried out at Korsvägen,” the job posting states. “Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work.”

Artist's impression of the project © Public Art Agency Sweden

The employee will start in 2026 (applications will only begin in 2025) and receive a salary of $2,312 per month ($27,744 per annum), an annual salary increase of 3.2 percent, vacation time and a pension for retirement.  

Anyone in the world may apply and the employee can do whatever they want while they’re on the clock apart from working another paid job. They may also quit or retire whenever they want at which point they will be replaced by another “worker.”

Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby proposed the idea in which a person is employed to “work” at the station indefinitely, doing whatever they please and, in the process, becoming the work of art.

“In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the impending threat/promise is that we will all become productively superfluous,” their proposal said. “We will all be ‘employed at Korsvägen,’ as it were.”

The funding to provide the annual salary is sufficient to last 120 years, despite the artwork’s name, “Eternal Employment.” Goldin and Senneby created a foundation to avoid paying taxes on the prize money, thus maximizing the potential length of the installation.

The art project has received criticism among the political classes, who have accused Goldin and Senneby of “using financial realism to mock the transcendental accomplishments of the welfare state” or of “wasting taxpayers’ money,” while others have simply described the whole endeavour as “stupidity” according to the CTPost.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!