College degree mandatory, graduate degree preferred.
Yearly continuing education costs.
Out of pocket expenses for classroom materials.
Sometimes providing food for kids who don't have it.
Famously low salaries and very long hours.
Luckily, underfunding the education of the next generation won't have any long lasting effects on society, right?
It creates:
Statistically, a constantly desperate hand-to-mouth workforce that must depend on employers to sustain their existence.
Armed forces signup incentives.
Easily-swayed consumers of products and services. (Run by those with access to nepotism and/or education, naturally.)
And easily manipulated voters.
Underfunding education and having people basically born into debt isn't a neglectful oversight, it's a deliberate strategy.
You maybe missed the sarcasm mark, but I admire your optimism that we'd all get the joke.
Surely people on the internet are fair and reasonable, right? There couldn't possibly be a downside to being sarcastic over posts?
Where I live, teachers are required to have Masters degrees and the starting wage for teachers is around $45k.
Ruling class is creating a disincentive for teachers
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
They've been paying teachers shit for way longer than AI has been around. AI can't do much of anything better than people though.
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
No, they are convinced that the church will do the job better. (Better defined as producing a more compliant and conservative work force.)
Oh longer than that. Look at what party leads in wanting to defund education but fund private paid education. The same party who is voted in by the uneducated, who famously are lacking in critical thinking and reasoning skills.
It's in their best interest to keep a low educated population who happily go to work and believe what they're told.
As a European, could you explain College degree, graduate, post graduate, etc. ? We have Bachelor's and Master's degree here, I thought we got that from you?
Teachers are horrendously underpaid, but they need to stop complaining about the “hours”. It rings disingenuous to most who know the job.
Unless they are taking afterschool roles they work generally 8-3:00 with a potentially a few hours of work after for grading and lesson planning. This is along with numerous holidays / admin days during the school year.
I say this knowing personally a few teachers who complain about hours, and it seems to be a cultural thing not based in their reported real experiences.
The salary is shit, at least for non-senior roles in my state, but that is not a lot of hours relative to the average wage earner.
You couldn't be more wrong.
All my teacher friends wind up working 10 hour days on average.
They work during breaks.
They work during summer.
Good teachers don't just show up for classroom time then disappear.
I know two teachers personally. This is not the case in my discussions with them and others. Maybe you can enlighten me on what does take 10 hours of time daily?
From speaking them they are absolutely not working from 8:0am - 6:00pm on every day.
Lesson plans are inherited from prior teachers and … yes continuously updated during the year but not at a major time cost every day. Grading takes a few hours for one day either on the weekend or in the evening.
And yes they complain about it constantly… it seems more a cultural thing. They also complain about other teachers complaining 🤣
I’m not touching the issue of summers off because yes that is a different thing, and yes it’s quite hard for them to get real employment.
Again salaries should be higher and support teachers not assuming they can work in the summer… but why conflate this with the daily hours ( which are frankly good as stated by those who I know in the profession as a reason they like and took the job)
Perhaps you misunderstand.
The hours are very high and the classroom time is only a small part of it.
The billed hours are extraordinarily low. :D
Warm and fuzzy feelings of inspiring the next generation are supposed to stand-in for actual wages in the USA.
Also better have plans to fill in that summer gap. I'm sure it's not fun vaycay time for teachers like it is for a lot of the students.
Ah yes, the "second paycheck".
College professors. Most are part time adjunct, most make garbage pay, work their asses off, while university executives make bank.
Where I live college professors are extremely well paid. Well, at least in private colleges.
TAs earn nearly nothing though.
TAs can earn money?
-Former TA
It's very important to be precise. Depending what country you're in, there could be full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, instructors, and other positions. Some of those positions might be well paid, but it's a safe bet that some of the others are not. So if you're looking at one full professor's salary and thinking that most other people with the word professor in their name make the same salary, depending what country you live in, you would be mistaken.
Actually wait a second, that's true in every country.
"Look at this asshole, learning how the world works. MAKE HIM SERVE COFFEE WITH THE REST OF THEM"
But why?
Musician. I have 7 years of university level studies and 12 years of work experience, and I make less than median salary in Sweden.
start your own label
Not that kind of musician. I work in a opera orchestra.
Well, start your orchestra label, mate. Pioneer the s#!t out of it
I'm guessing you are joking but I'm not really sure. Point is, I educated myself for a really long time and then I won a position in an orchestra, and my salary is now very low, in comparison. There are other benefits though so I'm not really complaining.
Teaching, 100%. Incredibly important, some of the most dedicated people in any field, and they're paid peanuts. Oh yeah, and they work like 12 hours a day. The way we treat them is a disgrace.
In North Carolina, most teachers have been required to have their Masters degree and additional training, but average less than 30k in my area. Some only make 17k a year.
Hurr durr they get off two months, they're fine
To the gulag with you
Social work. It's criminal.
As an ex social worker in Sweden (both as a case officer and treatment assistant), I can attest to the low pay, garbage benefits (if any) and extremely stressful work.
And the horrifying things you have to see, especially child protection.
In the US, most professors are part time adjunct and get no health benefits. Probably make 30-50k.
Tenured faculty at major universities make 70-90k.
Considering these jobs requires at least 9 years of uni (in the US), the lifetime income of professors is still very low.
RE TAs: I US stem fields TAs work 20h and make 15-30k. That usually includes free tuition, but not in all states (e.g. in Texas, you sometimes pay tuition out of your TA pay, which is crazy)
TAs work 20h and make 15-30k.
That’s time spent teaching. They are also expected to do research with the rest of their time, which is more work.
When I left academia to go to the private sector, I got a 40% bump in pay, and worked at least 30% less. And I didn't have to write grants to support my program. When I was an academic, I thought people never came back to academia from the private sector because they couldn't. I quickly found out that it was because they'd have to be crazy to come back. I wouldn't have returned to the university for anything less than an endowed chair. And that was NOT going to happen.
I'm almost the same story. Now I have great pay, fully remote, and a position where I'm respected, without competing egos, and folks want what I have to offer.
Kinda a tangent, but my department was always having guest speakers come from "alternative careers" but none were better paying or higher status than a professorship. Usually park rangers or low paying consulting things. Maybe I just had bad luck, but it really pushed the narrative that there were no opportunities out there. I'd love to give that talk to a department of PhD students, to give them my perspective if what's important from the outside looking in.
Public defenders make the list. Last figures I saw average salary is around $65k.
Is that more of a 'big expensive city' thing or is $65k generally considered low in the US? I'm not from there so I am trying to put that into perspective
For a lawyer it doesn't matter where you are in the US that is very low. I used to make more than that doing tech support in a high cost of living area.
That's not a lot more than the average salary of a paralegal
In general, that's probably a pretty OK income, not amazing, but probably a bit better than average depending on where you are in the country, but far from being wealthy, you're probably not struggling, but you're not above needing to worry about money sometimes either.
And since public defenders are lawyers, that's kind of a shitty income given that they had to go through law school and such.
65k is livable in most places but not particularly comfortable anywhere.
I asume it's 65k a year? Gross or net? Not from US, just want to compare. My brother-in-law's fiance is public sector lawyer and she does barely above minimum wage here (eastern EU). She gets somewhere between 15-20k USD a year (net, after tax).
In the US nobody really mentions their salary as an after tax amount, it’s almost always give as the pre-tax, pre-deduction amount.
Good to know, thank you.
It's not terrible. I mentioned it mainly because getting through law school in the US costs about $200k. Becoming a lawyer is one of the most expensive fields to get into.
My public defender wasn't worth a single cent. Justice is a sham, as is evident by Trump still walking around with his head after his heavy treason.
Emt/paramedic
Most science jobs pay garbage. We do it for the love of learning, knowledge and helping others.
"Do a job that you love and that'll substitute as half your pay! 😁"
EMT; I've heard that I'm about to get a raise to $17/hr but I think it may just be a carrot to keep me there (currently make $16).
It's so fucked. I know there are different levels, but the McDonald's out here in California starts at $20/hr.
Yep, I could walk into a McDonald's here and earn at least the same depending on the position. I knew that going into it though.
This right here. I took an EMT course at the local community college in 1999, then learned that the pay was minimum wage. Never got a job as an EMT because I needed more money to live.
Been this guy in a place where we were even written out of labor laws and started in the early 90's. When I started I made $6.50/hr and worked 168 hrs per two week rotation as an EMT. As. paramedic after I paid for my own education I got a raise to $8. It was brutal and we were the highest paid in our area. Some were getting $0.60/hr standby and $50 per call in rural areas where you would at that time get a call or two a week.
$50 per call but you can bet the patient is being billed $5k minimum for the ride, probably pocketed by insurance agencies or the hospital execs.
I can't understand how people are EMTs and why there haven't been riots over this, but God bless them.
Yes and those EMTs were making around $300/month.
Postdoc
Teachers and social workers
Social worker?
Highly dependent on the job. I'm a SW who hires SWs. New grad LMSWs can start at $60K in hospitals or some government jobs, or $40K in schools or some nonprofits. 5-10 years of experience and a clinical license and you'll easily pull $75-80K, or $90K+ in management.
Then there's private psychotherapy practice, which I know some people who charge $200/hour out of pocket and are scheduled out for months.
All this to say getting a master's in social work was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I have no regrets financially, but there are some people who do end up in very low paid jobs
Veterinarians
Not the expert in Cat Nephrology that I have to take my cat every other month. Always fully booked and it costs more than my doctor just for her to look at blood tests. srsly 5min. The tests itself are not included
There's no way it costs more than your doctor. You are either glossing over what your insurance is paying for you, or your doctor is seeing you in a back alley somewhere.
Also, you're not paying for the vet's time spent looking at bloodwork, which I actually do believe is 5 minutes. You're paying for the 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, (and if they're truly a specialist) several years of residency and being boarded, plus many hours of specialized continuing education per year.
Private equity firms have been buying veterinary offices at an increased rate since 2020 and jacking up rates, especially in high COL areas so I’m not surprised. My dog needed a tooth extracted at the end of last year and the cost was just under $1000. I understand there are highly trained individuals working there that need to be paid appropriately but I wonder what the cost for me to have one tooth extracted would be?
Agreed on the private equity firms shit, I've worked at 2 such hospitals and they've been hell. They're most assuredly not passing those increased prices along to the employees in form of wage increases, I'll tell you that.
Also, that tooth extraction is a choice to use as a comparison. I've never had to be anesthetized for my extractions, but good luck doing that on an awake dog, so of course costs are going to be high. Anesthestizing you for your dentistry would cost way way more than it does now, and certainly more tgan your dog's.
Foresters. You have to have a degree(most are 2 years, but still), and you can make less than the fed poverty rate. The exception is a federal job, but those are very competitive.
Librarians from what I've heard. They usually require a masters degree but the pay usually doesn't reflect that.
Which is crazy, because it widely depends on the district.
You could be in rurals-ville, FlyoverState, USA and make a pittance. (Oh plus BTW, the excitement of torches and pitchforks coming for you, your staff, and your collection. Politicians also attempting to undermine the entire institution of libraries for strategic mob-outrage points. Ah, perks!)
Or in some urban areas that are well-funded, librarians and especially branch managers are paid stupidly well. Their jobs mostly being general management duties, listening to the complaints of the insane and unreasonable, tresspassing the insane and unreasonable, and answering "Do you work here? Where's the bathroom?" Of course, that's when they're not stuck in pointless meetings.
Lots of stress sometimes. But BMs make low six-figures. I imagine there's worse jobs.
But it's one of those things where a spot usually opens up only if someone moves, retires, or expires.
Around here (Brazil), psychologists come to mind. The degree alone is worth jack shit, healthcare plans will usually pay lunch money per 1h session 3 months after said session, advertising psy services super regulated, patients have a significant chance of ghosting you, the federal council is great at fucking up graduates and workers, rather than protecting them, and most people would rather do any sort of trendy stupid holistic shit like familiar constellation, NLP, reiki and whatnot.
Source: had a gf with said degree and a postgrad in neuropsychology. Of her graduating class of 8, only 1 found "success" so to speak.
That's an interesting one. As a psychotherapist from Germany I can say we're definitely not low paid, but it is much less than other academic professions, and especially in relation to the time it takes to get qualified (roughly 10 years) and the cost of approbation itself (varies from 30k-160k, and that's in a country where education usually is free) it's really not a good fit for someone who is very financially motivated. (Ironically because of the high upfront cost the job tends to attract people from well endowed backgrounds though.)
I think like in many helping professions we have a majority of very idealistic people who don't negotiate very well. Employers get away with way too much because refusal at our side at first only ever hurts the patients, so we kinda keep up with it. Maybe something similar is happening in the professions that are in my mind actually the most underpaid for their time, and that's nursing and care work of all sorts.
I think like in many helping professions we have a majority of very idealistic people who don't negotiate very well.
Maybe that's exactly what we need: A training course for helping professions that teaches them to ruthlessly negotiate fair terms against capitalists.
Ironically, behind all this is a misconception that we're actually constantly working on with our patients. The truth is that the clinics would function better and we could offer better therapy if, for example, we weren't so overworked and enough staff were employed. But in order to achieve this, we would have to make decisions again and again in specific cases, which are less pleasant for patients in the short term. Specifically: saying no to our employers more often, strikes, and in the worst case resignation. Sensible in the long term, unpleasant in the short term. For our patients. And that's the crux of it.
Unfortunately it is always easier to discover those mistakes in the thinking of others. I have met dozens of colleagues who avoid fighting for better working conditions for precisely these reasons (while advising their patients to avoid this error in particular). And clinics of course know this and take advantage of it.
So better negotiation skills are really only party of the solution (although also very important). I think in the long term we need better education and more focus on socialist ideas, specifically on how and why employee rights (and the ability to self-care) are such an integral requirement to a job well done.
Fantastic thought-provoking points here. You're right, that's something I had kinda forgotten about when I wrote before:
Helping-professionals are (ideally) in those professions to help people, so their employers essentially hold patients/clients/students up as shields.
You're right, to change things would require a cultural shift that sees providers as "people" rather than "services." But generally it would be an extremely difficult PR war to sell to the people who require such services.
The soulless bosses are basically comic book villains: They know heroes will put themselves at considerable risk for the greater good, but won't risk the harming of innocents...
...so the greedy ownership class hides behind those innocents and, what's worse, trains them to accept such a low standard that any action that would drop that standard would turn the peoples' anger against the heroes who already sacrifice so much to help them.
I hate not knowing what to do past understanding what's so wrong. :(
Pilots. It's been some time since I read about it. I read some of the small puddle jumper pilots make so little they qualify for SNAP. Sure flying the big boys makes a bunch of money though.
Canadian FAs/Stews are under the poverty line due to the "no go no dough" employment rules. Maaaassive scam by the airlines.
This has changed quite a lot. Starting pay at regional airlines varies, but it is close to $100,000/year now.
This all happened right after the pandemic. Airlines did a lot of early retirements because nobody knew how long the industry would be in the dumps. As it turns out, there was a ton of pent up travel demand, so not only did airlines have to attract people to replace the retired pilots, but also for growth.
You're right, though. It used to be closer to $20,000/year back in 2005, and only went up slightly over the 15 year period leading up to the pandemic.
Librarian.
In sweden it needed 4 or 5 (or 4.5?) years of uni, only to have a hard time even getting a job, a job paying really low.
Same in Canada. Good choice.
Not the lowest, for sure, but I'm going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you're a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it's an ergonomic nightmare because you're picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.
As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it's really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they're taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn't make any more money. In fact they're losing money because they're stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.
And don't even get me started on tool loans. It's straight up worse than student loans because they're classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they're usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.
I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I've lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I'm trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it's all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same "take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work" cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.
Don't get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you've made it your career. And I don't want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it's a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.
Teachers for sure. Highly educated people providing a service that's absolutely crucial for everybody and they're paid like shit even before you consider the number of out-of-work hours they end up working.
That may only be western teachers. One of my family has been living in Sweden and teaching yr5 (only) for about 22 years. I'm pretty sure
the state pays for supplies, but I know she doesn't
she pretty much has the lesson plan set, with some evolution each year
swedish kids aren't total assholes as they have support for some of the big causes of assholish kids (unaddressed learning issues)
she's good to retire in three years. Already has a little boat!
She got her ticket in Canada and bounced around a bit until she landed this gig. Couldn't be happier for her.
Unfortunately not a more universal experience :( here in the UK teachers are treated like crap
It's the worst of all angles... Professions where the professional loves the work and wants to do the work no matter what get exploited more than most AND with public school teachers, they're stuck with taxpayer decided budgets....
As far as America goes: I WANT EVERYTHING AND I DON'T WANT TO PAY TAXES FOR IT!
We could take away Elon Musks obscene wealth, leave him with enough to experience no material change in quality of life, and pay every other american who isn't him $7,000k. And he's just one of 735 billionaires. We could tax the shit out of these people and neither they nor us would notice a difference at time, but then when it was time to provide social benefits from government programs, everyone would notice "wow. Doesn't this country work so much better? Look at all the things we can fund!"
$7,000k? Is that $7,000 or $7,000,000? 7,000 thousand?
I meant to put $7k
That makes sense.
I don't type good sometimes when I'm on the go and I make things redundant. In this case it even changed the meaning. I tried to go edit my comment but I got back a 500 error
Teachers in the US. Hands down.
I call your “teacher” and raise it to “social worker”.
In Australia any lab technician positions 4 year degree and start at AUD$65k, Max out at $80k or so. Equivalent engineering degrees max out at $120k for plebs.
Is a lab tech programme as suicidally crazy as a BEng?
Biology, unless you go into health related stuff.
Dead-end science phds making like $50K a year. Unfortunately, I have to manage/fire a lot of these people. People need to think and calculate carefully before going to grad school.
Being an officer in some places.
I’m guessing that you are not from America. I’m fairly certain that you can fail out of being a police officer because you’re too intelligent.
I've heard zoo keeper can be insanely competitive just to get a $0 internship or even pay money to work there and then the real jobs are also poverty level to work with animals.
The payment is getting to chill in the capybara enclosure.
Teaching.
College degree mandatory, graduate degree preferred.
Yearly continuing education costs.
Out of pocket expenses for classroom materials.
Sometimes providing food for kids who don't have it.
Famously low salaries and very long hours.
Luckily, underfunding the education of the next generation won't have any long lasting effects on society, right?
It creates:
Statistically, a constantly desperate hand-to-mouth workforce that must depend on employers to sustain their existence.
Armed forces signup incentives.
Easily-swayed consumers of products and services. (Run by those with access to nepotism and/or education, naturally.)
And easily manipulated voters.
Underfunding education and having people basically born into debt isn't a neglectful oversight, it's a deliberate strategy.
You maybe missed the sarcasm mark, but I admire your optimism that we'd all get the joke.
Surely people on the internet are fair and reasonable, right? There couldn't possibly be a downside to being sarcastic over posts?
Where I live, teachers are required to have Masters degrees and the starting wage for teachers is around $45k.
Ruling class is creating a disincentive for teachers
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
They've been paying teachers shit for way longer than AI has been around. AI can't do much of anything better than people though.
No, they are convinced that the church will do the job better. (Better defined as producing a more compliant and conservative work force.)
Oh longer than that. Look at what party leads in wanting to defund education but fund private paid education. The same party who is voted in by the uneducated, who famously are lacking in critical thinking and reasoning skills.
It's in their best interest to keep a low educated population who happily go to work and believe what they're told.
As a European, could you explain College degree, graduate, post graduate, etc. ? We have Bachelor's and Master's degree here, I thought we got that from you?
Teachers are horrendously underpaid, but they need to stop complaining about the “hours”. It rings disingenuous to most who know the job.
Unless they are taking afterschool roles they work generally 8-3:00 with a potentially a few hours of work after for grading and lesson planning. This is along with numerous holidays / admin days during the school year.
I say this knowing personally a few teachers who complain about hours, and it seems to be a cultural thing not based in their reported real experiences.
The salary is shit, at least for non-senior roles in my state, but that is not a lot of hours relative to the average wage earner.
You couldn't be more wrong.
All my teacher friends wind up working 10 hour days on average.
They work during breaks.
They work during summer.
Good teachers don't just show up for classroom time then disappear.
I know two teachers personally. This is not the case in my discussions with them and others. Maybe you can enlighten me on what does take 10 hours of time daily?
From speaking them they are absolutely not working from 8:0am - 6:00pm on every day.
Lesson plans are inherited from prior teachers and … yes continuously updated during the year but not at a major time cost every day. Grading takes a few hours for one day either on the weekend or in the evening.
And yes they complain about it constantly… it seems more a cultural thing. They also complain about other teachers complaining 🤣
I’m not touching the issue of summers off because yes that is a different thing, and yes it’s quite hard for them to get real employment.
Again salaries should be higher and support teachers not assuming they can work in the summer… but why conflate this with the daily hours ( which are frankly good as stated by those who I know in the profession as a reason they like and took the job)
Perhaps you misunderstand.
The hours are very high and the classroom time is only a small part of it.
The billed hours are extraordinarily low. :D
Warm and fuzzy feelings of inspiring the next generation are supposed to stand-in for actual wages in the USA.
Also better have plans to fill in that summer gap. I'm sure it's not fun vaycay time for teachers like it is for a lot of the students.
Ah yes, the "second paycheck".
College professors. Most are part time adjunct, most make garbage pay, work their asses off, while university executives make bank.
Where I live college professors are extremely well paid. Well, at least in private colleges.
TAs earn nearly nothing though.
TAs can earn money?
-Former TA
It's very important to be precise. Depending what country you're in, there could be full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, instructors, and other positions. Some of those positions might be well paid, but it's a safe bet that some of the others are not. So if you're looking at one full professor's salary and thinking that most other people with the word professor in their name make the same salary, depending what country you live in, you would be mistaken.
Actually wait a second, that's true in every country.
You can earn money as a TA???
Yeah, sell drugs to students.
Ahhh, that explains my TAs
Where do you live? I don't believe you.
Philosopher
It's also looked down upon.
"Look at this asshole, learning how the world works. MAKE HIM SERVE COFFEE WITH THE REST OF THEM"
But why?
Musician. I have 7 years of university level studies and 12 years of work experience, and I make less than median salary in Sweden.
start your own label
Not that kind of musician. I work in a opera orchestra.
Well, start your orchestra label, mate. Pioneer the s#!t out of it
I'm guessing you are joking but I'm not really sure. Point is, I educated myself for a really long time and then I won a position in an orchestra, and my salary is now very low, in comparison. There are other benefits though so I'm not really complaining.
Yea, I was just messing with you.
I do hope your happy tho 🙂
Kind of, thank you! Salary isn't the issue though. Money isn't everything 😀
Teaching, 100%. Incredibly important, some of the most dedicated people in any field, and they're paid peanuts. Oh yeah, and they work like 12 hours a day. The way we treat them is a disgrace.
In North Carolina, most teachers have been required to have their Masters degree and additional training, but average less than 30k in my area. Some only make 17k a year.
Hurr durr they get off two months, they're fine
To the gulag with you
Social work. It's criminal.
As an ex social worker in Sweden (both as a case officer and treatment assistant), I can attest to the low pay, garbage benefits (if any) and extremely stressful work.
And the horrifying things you have to see, especially child protection.
In the US, most professors are part time adjunct and get no health benefits. Probably make 30-50k.
Tenured faculty at major universities make 70-90k.
Considering these jobs requires at least 9 years of uni (in the US), the lifetime income of professors is still very low.
RE TAs: I US stem fields TAs work 20h and make 15-30k. That usually includes free tuition, but not in all states (e.g. in Texas, you sometimes pay tuition out of your TA pay, which is crazy)
That’s time spent teaching. They are also expected to do research with the rest of their time, which is more work.
When I left academia to go to the private sector, I got a 40% bump in pay, and worked at least 30% less. And I didn't have to write grants to support my program. When I was an academic, I thought people never came back to academia from the private sector because they couldn't. I quickly found out that it was because they'd have to be crazy to come back. I wouldn't have returned to the university for anything less than an endowed chair. And that was NOT going to happen.
I'm almost the same story. Now I have great pay, fully remote, and a position where I'm respected, without competing egos, and folks want what I have to offer.
Kinda a tangent, but my department was always having guest speakers come from "alternative careers" but none were better paying or higher status than a professorship. Usually park rangers or low paying consulting things. Maybe I just had bad luck, but it really pushed the narrative that there were no opportunities out there. I'd love to give that talk to a department of PhD students, to give them my perspective if what's important from the outside looking in.
Public defenders make the list. Last figures I saw average salary is around $65k.
Is that more of a 'big expensive city' thing or is $65k generally considered low in the US? I'm not from there so I am trying to put that into perspective
For a lawyer it doesn't matter where you are in the US that is very low. I used to make more than that doing tech support in a high cost of living area.
That's not a lot more than the average salary of a paralegal
In general, that's probably a pretty OK income, not amazing, but probably a bit better than average depending on where you are in the country, but far from being wealthy, you're probably not struggling, but you're not above needing to worry about money sometimes either.
And since public defenders are lawyers, that's kind of a shitty income given that they had to go through law school and such.
65k is livable in most places but not particularly comfortable anywhere.
I asume it's 65k a year? Gross or net? Not from US, just want to compare. My brother-in-law's fiance is public sector lawyer and she does barely above minimum wage here (eastern EU). She gets somewhere between 15-20k USD a year (net, after tax).
In the US nobody really mentions their salary as an after tax amount, it’s almost always give as the pre-tax, pre-deduction amount.
Good to know, thank you.
It's not terrible. I mentioned it mainly because getting through law school in the US costs about $200k. Becoming a lawyer is one of the most expensive fields to get into.
My public defender wasn't worth a single cent. Justice is a sham, as is evident by Trump still walking around with his head after his heavy treason.
Emt/paramedic
Most science jobs pay garbage. We do it for the love of learning, knowledge and helping others.
"Do a job that you love and that'll substitute as half your pay! 😁"
EMT; I've heard that I'm about to get a raise to $17/hr but I think it may just be a carrot to keep me there (currently make $16).
It's so fucked. I know there are different levels, but the McDonald's out here in California starts at $20/hr.
Yep, I could walk into a McDonald's here and earn at least the same depending on the position. I knew that going into it though.
This right here. I took an EMT course at the local community college in 1999, then learned that the pay was minimum wage. Never got a job as an EMT because I needed more money to live.
Been this guy in a place where we were even written out of labor laws and started in the early 90's. When I started I made $6.50/hr and worked 168 hrs per two week rotation as an EMT. As. paramedic after I paid for my own education I got a raise to $8. It was brutal and we were the highest paid in our area. Some were getting $0.60/hr standby and $50 per call in rural areas where you would at that time get a call or two a week.
$50 per call but you can bet the patient is being billed $5k minimum for the ride, probably pocketed by insurance agencies or the hospital execs.
I can't understand how people are EMTs and why there haven't been riots over this, but God bless them.
Yes and those EMTs were making around $300/month.
Postdoc
Teachers and social workers
Social worker?
Highly dependent on the job. I'm a SW who hires SWs. New grad LMSWs can start at $60K in hospitals or some government jobs, or $40K in schools or some nonprofits. 5-10 years of experience and a clinical license and you'll easily pull $75-80K, or $90K+ in management.
Then there's private psychotherapy practice, which I know some people who charge $200/hour out of pocket and are scheduled out for months.
All this to say getting a master's in social work was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I have no regrets financially, but there are some people who do end up in very low paid jobs
Veterinarians
Not the expert in Cat Nephrology that I have to take my cat every other month. Always fully booked and it costs more than my doctor just for her to look at blood tests. srsly 5min. The tests itself are not included
There's no way it costs more than your doctor. You are either glossing over what your insurance is paying for you, or your doctor is seeing you in a back alley somewhere.
Also, you're not paying for the vet's time spent looking at bloodwork, which I actually do believe is 5 minutes. You're paying for the 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, (and if they're truly a specialist) several years of residency and being boarded, plus many hours of specialized continuing education per year.
Private equity firms have been buying veterinary offices at an increased rate since 2020 and jacking up rates, especially in high COL areas so I’m not surprised. My dog needed a tooth extracted at the end of last year and the cost was just under $1000. I understand there are highly trained individuals working there that need to be paid appropriately but I wonder what the cost for me to have one tooth extracted would be?
Agreed on the private equity firms shit, I've worked at 2 such hospitals and they've been hell. They're most assuredly not passing those increased prices along to the employees in form of wage increases, I'll tell you that.
Also, that tooth extraction is a choice to use as a comparison. I've never had to be anesthetized for my extractions, but good luck doing that on an awake dog, so of course costs are going to be high. Anesthestizing you for your dentistry would cost way way more than it does now, and certainly more tgan your dog's.
Foresters. You have to have a degree(most are 2 years, but still), and you can make less than the fed poverty rate. The exception is a federal job, but those are very competitive.
Librarians from what I've heard. They usually require a masters degree but the pay usually doesn't reflect that.
Which is crazy, because it widely depends on the district.
You could be in rurals-ville, FlyoverState, USA and make a pittance. (Oh plus BTW, the excitement of torches and pitchforks coming for you, your staff, and your collection. Politicians also attempting to undermine the entire institution of libraries for strategic mob-outrage points. Ah, perks!)
Or in some urban areas that are well-funded, librarians and especially branch managers are paid stupidly well. Their jobs mostly being general management duties, listening to the complaints of the insane and unreasonable, tresspassing the insane and unreasonable, and answering "Do you work here? Where's the bathroom?" Of course, that's when they're not stuck in pointless meetings.
Lots of stress sometimes. But BMs make low six-figures. I imagine there's worse jobs.
But it's one of those things where a spot usually opens up only if someone moves, retires, or expires.
Around here (Brazil), psychologists come to mind. The degree alone is worth jack shit, healthcare plans will usually pay lunch money per 1h session 3 months after said session, advertising psy services super regulated, patients have a significant chance of ghosting you, the federal council is great at fucking up graduates and workers, rather than protecting them, and most people would rather do any sort of trendy stupid holistic shit like familiar constellation, NLP, reiki and whatnot.
Source: had a gf with said degree and a postgrad in neuropsychology. Of her graduating class of 8, only 1 found "success" so to speak.
That's an interesting one. As a psychotherapist from Germany I can say we're definitely not low paid, but it is much less than other academic professions, and especially in relation to the time it takes to get qualified (roughly 10 years) and the cost of approbation itself (varies from 30k-160k, and that's in a country where education usually is free) it's really not a good fit for someone who is very financially motivated. (Ironically because of the high upfront cost the job tends to attract people from well endowed backgrounds though.)
I think like in many helping professions we have a majority of very idealistic people who don't negotiate very well. Employers get away with way too much because refusal at our side at first only ever hurts the patients, so we kinda keep up with it. Maybe something similar is happening in the professions that are in my mind actually the most underpaid for their time, and that's nursing and care work of all sorts.
Maybe that's exactly what we need: A training course for helping professions that teaches them to ruthlessly negotiate fair terms against capitalists.
Ironically, behind all this is a misconception that we're actually constantly working on with our patients. The truth is that the clinics would function better and we could offer better therapy if, for example, we weren't so overworked and enough staff were employed. But in order to achieve this, we would have to make decisions again and again in specific cases, which are less pleasant for patients in the short term. Specifically: saying no to our employers more often, strikes, and in the worst case resignation. Sensible in the long term, unpleasant in the short term. For our patients. And that's the crux of it.
Unfortunately it is always easier to discover those mistakes in the thinking of others. I have met dozens of colleagues who avoid fighting for better working conditions for precisely these reasons (while advising their patients to avoid this error in particular). And clinics of course know this and take advantage of it.
So better negotiation skills are really only party of the solution (although also very important). I think in the long term we need better education and more focus on socialist ideas, specifically on how and why employee rights (and the ability to self-care) are such an integral requirement to a job well done.
Fantastic thought-provoking points here. You're right, that's something I had kinda forgotten about when I wrote before:
Helping-professionals are (ideally) in those professions to help people, so their employers essentially hold patients/clients/students up as shields.
You're right, to change things would require a cultural shift that sees providers as "people" rather than "services." But generally it would be an extremely difficult PR war to sell to the people who require such services.
The soulless bosses are basically comic book villains: They know heroes will put themselves at considerable risk for the greater good, but won't risk the harming of innocents...
...so the greedy ownership class hides behind those innocents and, what's worse, trains them to accept such a low standard that any action that would drop that standard would turn the peoples' anger against the heroes who already sacrifice so much to help them.
I hate not knowing what to do past understanding what's so wrong. :(
Pilots. It's been some time since I read about it. I read some of the small puddle jumper pilots make so little they qualify for SNAP. Sure flying the big boys makes a bunch of money though.
Canadian FAs/Stews are under the poverty line due to the "no go no dough" employment rules. Maaaassive scam by the airlines.
This has changed quite a lot. Starting pay at regional airlines varies, but it is close to $100,000/year now.
This all happened right after the pandemic. Airlines did a lot of early retirements because nobody knew how long the industry would be in the dumps. As it turns out, there was a ton of pent up travel demand, so not only did airlines have to attract people to replace the retired pilots, but also for growth.
You're right, though. It used to be closer to $20,000/year back in 2005, and only went up slightly over the 15 year period leading up to the pandemic.
Librarian.
In sweden it needed 4 or 5 (or 4.5?) years of uni, only to have a hard time even getting a job, a job paying really low.
Same in Canada. Good choice.
Not the lowest, for sure, but I'm going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you're a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it's an ergonomic nightmare because you're picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.
As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it's really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they're taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn't make any more money. In fact they're losing money because they're stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.
And don't even get me started on tool loans. It's straight up worse than student loans because they're classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they're usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.
I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I've lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I'm trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it's all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same "take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work" cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.
Don't get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you've made it your career. And I don't want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it's a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.
Teachers for sure. Highly educated people providing a service that's absolutely crucial for everybody and they're paid like shit even before you consider the number of out-of-work hours they end up working.
That may only be western teachers. One of my family has been living in Sweden and teaching yr5 (only) for about 22 years. I'm pretty sure
She got her ticket in Canada and bounced around a bit until she landed this gig. Couldn't be happier for her.
Unfortunately not a more universal experience :( here in the UK teachers are treated like crap
It's the worst of all angles... Professions where the professional loves the work and wants to do the work no matter what get exploited more than most AND with public school teachers, they're stuck with taxpayer decided budgets....
As far as America goes: I WANT EVERYTHING AND I DON'T WANT TO PAY TAXES FOR IT!
We could take away Elon Musks obscene wealth, leave him with enough to experience no material change in quality of life, and pay every other american who isn't him $7,000k. And he's just one of 735 billionaires. We could tax the shit out of these people and neither they nor us would notice a difference at time, but then when it was time to provide social benefits from government programs, everyone would notice "wow. Doesn't this country work so much better? Look at all the things we can fund!"
$7,000k? Is that $7,000 or $7,000,000? 7,000 thousand?
I meant to put $7k
That makes sense.
I don't type good sometimes when I'm on the go and I make things redundant. In this case it even changed the meaning. I tried to go edit my comment but I got back a 500 error
Teachers in the US. Hands down.
I call your “teacher” and raise it to “social worker”.
In Australia any lab technician positions 4 year degree and start at AUD$65k, Max out at $80k or so. Equivalent engineering degrees max out at $120k for plebs.
Is a lab tech programme as suicidally crazy as a BEng?
Biology, unless you go into health related stuff.
Dead-end science phds making like $50K a year. Unfortunately, I have to manage/fire a lot of these people. People need to think and calculate carefully before going to grad school.
Being an officer in some places.
I’m guessing that you are not from America. I’m fairly certain that you can fail out of being a police officer because you’re too intelligent.
I've heard zoo keeper can be insanely competitive just to get a $0 internship or even pay money to work there and then the real jobs are also poverty level to work with animals.
The payment is getting to chill in the capybara enclosure.