The job with the least status often does the most good. Ask anyone who’s been cared for by a nurse’s aide.

Status and usefulness get measured by different systems, and they come apart constantly. Washing somebody, feeding them, sitting with them at four in the morning: that work carries low pay, no prestige and almost total importance to the person receiving it. Anybody who has been properly cared for remembers the aide, not the hierarchy above them.

When you think about work, keep usefulness as its own column instead of folding it into status. Ask somebody you know in one of those jobs what the day is actually like, and listen before you rank it.