This article advances the argument that we are becoming a post-work society, and that the restoration of work-centred society is an irrational and untenable goal. I consider the phenomenon of jobless growth and suggest that the economy’s declining need for labour is underestimated due to the influence of three factors: a statistical dependence on jobs held rather than hours worked; the growth of socially unproductive personal services; and the growth of destructive, defensive and unsustainable forms of production. I show that the decentring of work in people’s lives is a process well under way, and conclude that the ‘crisis’ of work-based society derives not from the scarcity of work, but from a theoretical and practical failure to give the decline of work a human meaning.