The term “cognitive labor” refers to a type of work that differs from physical labor and emotional labor, but which often intersects with both.
Someone who is engaged in cognitive labor is exerting effort on something that is neurologically draining: perhaps not turning a wrench or empathizing with someone on the other end of a transaction, but instead keeping their brains active and on alert, anticipating other people’s needs, figuring out ways to fulfill those needs, making decisions about all sorts of things that are often invisible to other people and thus not celebrated as valuable labor, and monitoring the progress of these various endeavors.
This term has been around in various shapes and used for various purposes for over a century, but it gained newfound prominence with the shift of many wealthy economies to what’s often called a “post-Fordism” or “knowledge economy”-based structure.
Whereas the Industrial Revolution and subsequent mini-movements revolved around mechanization and automation, the next-stage shift from figuring out how to make more products, to figuring out how to sell those products more effectively, and how to “produce” and sell services instead of products, required a change-up in how labor is performed. In particular, less raw muscle was typically required, but the folks involved needed to be more on their game in terms of communication, imagination, problem-solving, and abstract thinking.
This term was later applied, especially post-WWII and even more especially from the 1980s, onward, to relationship dynamics: how spouses divide up labor between themselves, and how a great deal of the labor being done in most households is invisible to one spouse but draining for the other.
The 20th century, stereotypical example of this division has the husband of a household going to work, at an office, warehouse, or factory, while the wife stays at home, takes care of all the household responsibilities that are not directly related to earning a paycheck, and keeps the kids both alive and thriving.
The work associated with that first category—the person going somewhere to perform a type of labor that is recognized and monetarily rewarded as such—is a lot more legible within our dominant, modern system of economics.
The work associated with that second category—an array of responsibilities, tasks, and problems that need solving, but which don’t typically fit cleanly into a résumé or CV—is less legible within that system, and in some cases not even legible to the people who benefit from it: the husband and kids who live in the home that seems to magically maintain itself, produce food, and keep everyone within it safe and happy most of the time, with little or no effort on their part.
This example is, again, a stereotypical, cookie-cutter version of what’s often described in the literature about cognitive labor as it applies to relationships. But permutations of this model apply widely, if at different scales, around the world.
Often, someone within a relationship pairing bears the majority of the cognitive load—the mental work that needs doing—and just as often, that work is either near-completely invisible to the other person in the partnership, or less visible, and thus, less valued than the other sorts of work performed by people in the household.
Some résumé-worthy work performed for a paycheck outside the house is more heavily dependent on cognitive labor than others.
Folks who deal with other people, whether they work in Human Resources or as personal assistants, do a great deal of mental work that other people don’t necessarily see or appreciate, but which is nonetheless draining for those doing it and valuable to those who benefit from it.
This term can also be applied to the scale of a society in assessing who performs the cognitive labor of ensuring a city maintains a sense of cultural history and invests in non- or less-obviously economically beneficial things, like art and public spaces.
People who work to maintain a sense of place and distinction for their city or town are performing similar types of cognitive labor to those who maintain households or help businesses or other sorts of organizations cultivate and sustain a differentiating, difficult-to-measure “soul” of sorts; a type of ethical standpoint or values-based perspective that would be tricky to define or track in a spreadsheet, but which is nonetheless important and valuable, and would be greatly missed if not thus preserved and perpetuated.
When we perform this type of labor, our minds are activated and often stay activated, triggering the same sorts of processes and reflexes that help us stay alive, and which scan our environments for threats and opportunities. We optimize our behaviors to become problem-solving machines, self-sacrificing team-players, and defenders-of-our-tribe.
This is a stressful, draining mental stance to strike, and this is valuable work even if it’s not currently valued by every person and every institution as such.
It's worth considering how much more equitable and resilient our families and societies might be if an awareness of cognitive labor were more prevalent and pronounced, and if our economic systems rewarded such efforts and contributions in proportion to the value they generate.
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