I vigorously agree that some jobs destroy value on net, but the report described in the BBC's article is pretty unconvincing. I have the impression that the people who wrote it knew what conclusion they wanted before they began.

As an example, they claim that the UK's top bankers and fund managers destroy about £7.40 in value for every £1 they get in salary. How do they get that figure? They assign to those people ...

* 100% of the predicted reduction in UK GDP from 2008 to 2014 as a result of the 2008 crisis (as measured by the difference between IMF forecasts immediately before and immediately after)
* an "adjustment to reflect a loss of 5% of UK economic capacity between the onset of the crisis and 2020" (that sounds like double-counting to me, but I can't tell because they don't give any details)
* 100% of an estimate of increased debt as a result of the crisis, obtained as the difference between an IMF forecast immediately after the crisis and the UK government's forecast immediately before it (sounds like more double-counting to me, and I bet the government's predictions are systematically more optimistic than the IMF's)
* an "allowance for debt servicing costs on the additional debt incurred"
* 50% of 1/6 of the tax revenue from the UK financial sector (treated as a pure positive to weigh against the pure negative of value destroyed by the 2008 crisis). The 1/6 is because they guess 5/6 of the UK financial sector is retail rather than wholesale finance and consider the gains attributable to top bankers to be only in the wholesale part. The 50% is because not all of the tax paid by the wholesale financial industry is paid by, or otherwise attributable to, its top bankers.
* 50% of 2.5% of the UK's GVA or "gross value added" as estimated by the ONS. The 2.5% is the ONS's estimate of how much London financial services contributed to GVA. The 50% is because not all of that is attributable to the top bankers. I don't know why they're using GVA here but GDP when estimating value destroyed by the 2008 crisis.
* 50% of 50% of an estimate of post-tax earnings of finance workers in the City of London. Post-tax because they already counted tax revenue. 50% because not all the credit for those people having those jobs belongs to the top bankers. 50% because if they didn't have those jobs then they'd presumably have other jobs.

The costs of the 2008 crisis are considered as a one-off. For the benefits, which are a recurring thing, they assumed a 20-year career for those bankers.

Soooo many things about this look highly dubious to me. There isn't a 2008-scale crisis every 20 years. The 2008 crisis was a global thing and we have no idea what fraction of it was the fault of people in the UK, versus what fraction of its effects were suffered by the UK. It's not at all clear that it's entirely attributable to "top bankers". Their measures of value destroyed by the crisis look very susceptible to double-counting and other errors. If there's a good reason for using GDP to reckon the loss and GVA to reckon the gain, it eludes me. So far as I can tell, the ONS's reckoning of the financial industry's contribution to GVA is looking only at things like how much revenue the financial industry gets for the services it provides, whereas the claimed benefits of the financial industry to the economy are all about things like providing liquidity, more efficient allocation of capital, etc., which they don't consider at all. Almost all the key numbers in their calculation are low-effort guesses: look at all those "50%"s.

I would be 100% unsurprised if it turned out that top bankers' net contribution to the world is negative. But I don't think this report really tells me anything of value about whether that's so.

That was the first profession in the report. I haven't looked at the others. I strongly suspect they are just as terrible as this one.

Here's the actual report: https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/8c16eabdbadf83ca79_oj... -- all the details are in Appendix 2.