The New Economics Foundation (NEF) recently published a report entitled A Bit Rich. Prompted by the controversial bonuses paid out to bankers who wrecked their banks and were then bailed out by the taxpayer, it examines the relationship between pay and value.

The report argues that we need to consider how an activity contributes to society as whole rather than the economy alone if we are to say what it is “worth”. Rather than focus on the current narrow economic view on productivity, the worth of work should include social and environmental indicators, with remuneration being adjusted to reflect these.

This could be achieved by applying a multi-stakeholder approach, whereby a wide range of groups affected by the activity in question contributes to the assessment. This would make it possible (if not easy) to equate the true impact of a job on society as a whole, rather than simply its contribution (or otherwise) to the economy.

To illustrate its point, the report applies this method to calculating the ‘worth’ of six different jobs, including a City banker and a nursery worker.

Assuming, as NEF does, that the current financial crisis and the recession occurred because of the risky transactions of City bankers, the report argues that such activities cost rather than benefited society. These costs would traditionally be treated as externalities, not featuring in the banks’ balance sheets and hence not reflected in salaries and bonuses.

In NEF’s analysis, however, these externalities are accounted for, resulting in the conclusion that for every pound in value created by the City bankers through taxes, jobs provided in the sector and general economic activity, seven pounds of social value is destroyed. Nursery workers, by comparison, contribute seven pounds of worth to society for every pound they are paid.

There are some problems with this analysis not least that in the case of the City bankers NEF measures their cost by comparing IMF’s April 2008 and October 2009 forecasts for UK GDP through to 2014. One could object that these years are not representative of the true cost of the City’s financial activities. Moreover it seems unfair to make a few thousand City bankers responsible for the entire financial crisis. Conversely, in the case of the nursery worker the report presupposes good childcare, a presumption which might be considered unfair in the context and which therefore distorts the result. More generally, there is the wider problem about exactly how social and environmental factors are valued; how different stakeholders’ input should be weighted against each other.

Nevertheless, the report makes an enormously important point and, in any case, is less concerned with exact numbers as with the principles of the argument. If A Bit Rich is right, and it is surely gesturing in the right direction, many jobs, including city bankers and nursery workers are remunerated incorrectly.

Whether one agrees or not with the NEF analysis, it is fruitful to discuss how we assess the objective value of work. Such discussions should not blind us to another, equally important aspect of work, however: its subjective value.

As Catholic Social Teaching (CST) emphasises, work is fundamentally linked to the vocation and dignity of the person who undertakes it. Its true value comes not only in what it contributes to the outside world of society and economy, but also in what it contributes to the inner world of dignity and self-respect. It is imperative not to forget this in a time of recession and high unemployment. Anyone who has ever experienced being out of work knows that work is far more than simply the money it produces. The worker is worth more than his pay, or even his social contribution.

We need to calculate to the objective value of work as accurately as we can but, at the same time, not lose sight of the fact that work itself has more than that objective value, just as human dignity does not rely on a person’s “objective” contribution to society.

Rikke Juul is an intern at Theos. She has a Masters of Theology degree from Aarhus University, Denmark.