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!
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.
Philosopher
“Look at this asshole, learning how the world works. MAKE HIM SERVE COFFEE WITH THE REST OF THEM”
But why?
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.
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.
Postdoc
Did you mean a slave who has recently graduated to indentured servant status?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Then factor in the hours you have to spend at a second job because your main job doesn’t pay a living wage.
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”.
Luckily, underfunding the education of the next generation won’t have any long lasting effects on society, right?
You maybe missed the sarcasm mark, but I admire your optimism that we’d all get the joke.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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/Stew’s are under the poverty line due to the “no go no dough” employment rules. Maaaassive scamby 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.
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.
Public defenders make the list. Last figures I saw average salary is around $65k.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
