More demanding and more skilled jobs are generally better paid on average. Just out of curiosity what the most demanding & hardest job that (relatively) pays among the most poorly?
After all the threads about pharmacists, pharmacy is what pops into my head. Lots and lots of training required and the hours suck for many.
The pay is okay, I guess, but it doesn’t seem to reflect those hours of training and terrible work hours.
I’d think many military jobs would certainly qualify - a fighter pilot for example. Also, senior officers and flag officers, who oversee thousands of people and are responsible for untold millions or even billions of $$$ in assets, are paid only a fraction of what a civilian counterpart would be paid. ( A CEO, for example)
Well, it isn’t skilled, but when you talk about demanding it’s hard to beat that old-fashioned classic, ditch digger. It’s not all been replaced by earth moving machinery - here the ones for the city are “laborer I” and “laborer II”, which can mean anything but mostly you see them down in a hole moving dirt with a shovel. Requires an 8th grade education, pays something like 8.50/hr.
The average British orchestral musician has a salary of £22k with 21 years experience.
Public education.
The entire world thinks your day begins at eight a.m. and ends at three-thirty or so. NOT true, but try convincing most of the world of that.
The entire world thinks you get three months off, paid vacation, in the summer. NOT true, but try convincing most of the world of that.
It takes four years of education, minimum, to get the qualifications to even apply for this job. Four years of higher education isn’t cheap, no matter where you do it. The salary is such, at the starting level, that you can’t support a family of four on it… at least, not without a lot of macaroni and cheese and other poverty-based measures. Oh, and in Texas, now, you get to make sure you have a certain number of EXTRA education hours, every five years, or lose your certification. Getting these hours is YOUR responsibility, and must be accomplished during your own time, and probably at your own expense. This is to make sure all teachers keep up with the latest trends and new information in their fields.
Even doctors don’t have to do this. They SHOULD, yeah, but I don’t see anyone rushing to pass any laws to MAKE them.
Social work. I’m serious. Probably especially prison social workers. When I started in social work in the year 2000, my second full-time job paid 21,000 per year, and I worked in domestic violence, where it’s relatively dangerous. Both victims and perps tend to be extremely unstable and the volatile situations alone eat away at your soul.
Needless to say, I got out of that job in a hurry.
Pharmacists make $40+ an hour. That is nowhere near poor pay and automatically makes someone in the top 10% of wageearners. And it used to be that you could be a pharmacist with just a bachelors degree.
I would say the most complex with lowest pay is some kind of academia job for people with advanced educations who are in the subject because they love it. I’m sure there are alot of people who have masters or doctorates who make $12/hr working in a lab somewhere in a college.
Actually, graduate student is probably the most demanding and complex job with the lowest pay. That or medical resident because when you work it out they make around $6/hr for very advanced work. They work about 80 hours a week and make about 25k a year from what i’ve seen. Thats assuming that these count as ‘jobs’ though when they are just transition periods.
Nurse’s aid is also a demanding and degrading job that pays about what a job at walmart pays. I don’t know about ‘most demanding’ but if they are understaffed a nurses aid will be under alot of stress and do alot of degrading things for $6-8/hr.
Chemistry grad students make typically work 60 hours or so per week for the princely sum of 18-26k. Granted they’re working on projects which will further their academic careers but the amount of knowledge and skills required, not to mention the long hours is astounding.
I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician. I was paid 8.15 an hour to have the responsibility of the life of a stranger in my hands. The Paramedic I rode with had a much higher level of skill and training. He/She would wear narcotics ON their person in a small pouch, for use when needed. They were paid 14.00 an hour.
Abomination.
Additionally: My Mom was a teacher for my entire childhood and early adulthood. My wife has been a teacher, since before I met her 20 years ago. Both of them enjoyed 2 1/2 to 3 months of vacation each and ever summer. Aside from a few hours right before the start of a new school year, they spent/spend zero vacation time working on their careers. They got 1-2 weeks off at Christmas, 1-2 weeks off at Spring Break time, summers off and finished at 3:19pm every day with no work brought home. Ever. They are/were both dedicated, excellent hard-working professionals. But to proclaim that
is patently untrue. Perhaps it is true in Texas, but it is absolutely not true in Pennsylvania or New York State. Ok? First-hand lifelong experience witnessing a pattern of work and time off. Teachers are in fact paid 12 months a year at least up here. They are given the option- on a personal basis- of being paid 10 months or 12 months in pay cycles. They are not left unpaid during the summertime, at least not public school teachers.
Cartooniverse
I’d say a farmer, although there are so many different types and scales of their operations.
The hours are long, you need to be able to repair anything, you’re dependant on the forces of nature, food prices are low and they’re at the knife of the seed producers.
Many need to take outside jobs in town just to maintain their operations.
Hmm, my dad manages a Walgreens and is pretty jealous of both the pay and workload of his pharmacists.
Don’t they have to take medical boards every ten years? I know my father does. It could just be an emergency room doctor thing, though. And it takes hours of time- they have to always read all of these medical journals to keep up to date, then study. They also have to take a class. And all this before taking a Big Test.
Just to clarify- I’m not saying that teachers don’t have it rough, too- my mother is a Spanish teacher (although granted, a private school one), so I’m well aware of how much shit our educators have to put up with. They are way underpaid.
How about broadcasting? I’ve been at it for 30 years. I make $10 an hour. I have no benefits of any kind, no vacation, no guarantee of anything except that the station isn’t going to change formats and fire all the staff, like commercial radio. It’s impossible to make a living at it, but it’s one of the best jobs in the world. That’s why we all do it.
Maybe it’s a regional thing. The pharmacies hiring around here start at about $25,000. After that sort of education, that’s pretty low. (It would take me five years to complete the schooling, and I have a bachelor’s degree.)
Stay at home moms.
**Cons ** On call 24 hours, seven days a week. Loss in Social Security bennies down the road. Loss of adult conversation and Adult TV time and Adult Music. Gap in job resume. Possible loss in job skills. Gap in technological advances since leaving Real World. Wardrobe gets more relaxed. Car is definately more cluttered. Memory and tits are for shit.
**Responsibility: ** molding and imprinting one child at a time their entire concept on Life, Love, Religion,Death, Politics, Race Issues, Playing Fair, Germ **Warfare, Eating Right, Education, Sports and Sex. First at hand for all medical situations and responsible for all maintence on from the moment the umbilical cord is cut.
Pay: Zero
**Benefits: **
Now: Priceless
Down the road: Fucked beyond measure. I’ll just become one of those annoying greeters at Walmart. And if you see me, just shoot me. Thanks.
All coding errors I blame on Soceity.
Um, they never brought work home? Did it all in their planning period? I don’t want to say anything bad about your mom or your wife, but I’ve never known a teacher worth their salt who didn’t spend a lot of time at home planning and grading.
A friend of mine finally burned out and quit his job at the Department of Juveniile Corrections, where he got physically assaulted two or three times a week and put down riots almost as often for about 21,000 a year. Had to buy his own uniforms, too.
That doesn’t mean the summer months are “paid vacation,” though. At least not for my husband, it doesn’t. It just means the yearly wage is divided by 10 or divided by 12 and parcelled out accordingly. Most people opt to have a steady, regular income. Also, I don’t dispute your evaluation of your kin, but that is the first I have ever heard of any teachers who could be described as “dedicated, excellent, hard-working professionals” who never brought any work home, ever. I daresay there are teachers out there wondering how they manage[d] that.
Shirley Ujest, you beat me to it.