The other problem is that other people already wrote extensively on better refinements of the concept, coming up with theories of positional goods, conspicuous consumption, signalling, information asymmetry within bureaucratic organizations, economic rent extraction etc. As well as explaining why a lot of jobs which in an ideal world filled with ideally-behaving people wouldn't exist could actually be necessary and useful in the real world, and why professions often seen (especially by their participants) as extremely meaningful and impactful like the arts are often funded by those that aren't, like advertising.
Graeber's definition of a "bullshit" job as one the worker didn't feel was meaningful - the canonical example being his lawyer friend who would rather people paid him for his hobby of making music - and his claim that the private sector was creating them as some sort of workfare program feels comparatively naive.
I think you're right, but I also think what Graeber was legitimate in the sense that he went at it from the other end.
Yes, economists (especially the non-neoclassical ones) came up with all sorts of market failures. But they can seem to be a bit theoretical, as in, well, maybe these things happen in the wild, but maybe mostly not. In other words, they treat it as interesting, but disconnected, phenomena.
Graeber, as an anthropologist, just noticed lots of people being unhappy even in the situation of material abundance. And he looked for an unifying explanation. I think there definitely is a connection, but it will have to wait for somebody to analyze it in more detail.
Graeber's definition of a "bullshit" job as one the worker didn't feel was meaningful - the canonical example being his lawyer friend who would rather people paid him for his hobby of making music - and his claim that the private sector was creating them as some sort of workfare program feels comparatively naive.