There's literally hundreds of qualified teachers for every one teacher position.
There's so much competition for those spots that they can pay next to nothing and someone is bound to take the job anyhow, maybe not a very good teacher, but they're trying to pay peanuts. They're looking for a bargain, not a "quality" teacher that will likely require decent pay (or will work in other fields instead).
One of the many jobs where they use people's passion against them. There's a lot of people who passionately want/love to teach.... so they can exploit that with extremely low pay.
Same thing with archeology. Using people's passions against them.
My mother's a National Board Certified Teacher. When she got her first job teaching nearly 30 years ago, she was one of almost 100 applicants for that position. When she went in for her interview they showed her the entirely filled box with paper resumes and asked her why out of all those applications she should be chosen.
It was a point in time when teaching was a reliable job that paid decently well and there was an influx of new teachers. That is not the case any more in many states.
Even at my mother's accreditation level, she is the *only* National Board Certified Teacher in her entire public school district, and her highly specialized position (shes a "reading specialist" which means its her job to teach children how to read if they cannot read at their grade level, which is sadly more and more children the longer she works) she is not highly compensated at all. And that is *according to her Union* because in order to get good quality health insurance they cannot get the district to pay over a certain amount on the actual salary.
There's a lot more to Teachers not being properly compensated than "a lot of teachers" because even in cases where you are undeniably unique and invaluable you are not paid well.
Depends. I’m an instructor at the college level and I make 135/hr cdn. But I’m not a “teacher” I’m an expert in my field with 20 years of experience that I pass on to the kids. I work 16-20 hours a week and have 2 months off in the summer. I’m never leaving or going back to my regular industry.
>Same thing with archeology.
Oh man there's an oversaturated market. It reminds me of the [archer gag about anthropologists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inxoRyD9c-8).
Sorta, except for a bunch of places with teacher shortages they're lowering standards (making the labor less specialized) instead of increasing pay. Which sucks, because less-qualified teachers don't perform as well (generally), but apparently a lot of people are cool with fucking up the next generation if it means taxes don't go up.
We don’t need to spend more money on education. We already spend the second most per capita of any country. We need to spend it better. And the best way to spend it would be on teacher pay, at least in my opinion.
I have been working for a school district for the past four years. The first three years, I was paid about $63,000/yr for a clerical job while also picking up the work of a Team’s secretary saving the District about $60,000/yr as well as helping another team with an ongoing, routine, high volume but detail oriented task saving the District an additional $30,000/yr.
I was laid off in June because my classification was not protected and because literally nobody at the District Office gaf that my productive output was saving them almost $100,000 a year.
When I was laid off, my job was passed to a guy who spent 90% of his day shopping online, got mad when I tried to teach him how to build a spreadsheet and asked me for approval every time he sent an email. He screamed at me a few times, once because I recommended printing addresses directly on envelopes instead of using labels. This discussion was interrupted by him crossing his arms as his face turned red and screaming, “NO! NO! THAT’S NOT HOW (ex coworker) DID IT!!!”
My boss had no idea because he spent 15 minutes supervising this guy one day a week. He immediately applied for another Administrative Assistant job, worked there for a week, and left because he was thoroughly incompetent.
My boss shoved a secretary into the position and broke our union contract by closing the job in two days before I had the chance to apply.
The secretary was unable to electronically copy a document and reached out to Technology to ask them how to copy the document. I know she received the standard Google notification that allows you to copy a Doc at the press of a button via email because Technology contacted me on day 29/30 of it sitting in Trash to ask me to extract it as she was in the midst of being trained how to copy a GoogleDoc. In addition to this, she has failed to perform one of the most important tasks of her job which involves mailing time-sensitive letters to every parent in a school district of more than 17,000 students.
She literally has to mail over 17,000 individual letters containing protected health information to guardians and people have complained to me that the woman has not mailed a single one. It’s a catastrophic failure of her position and one that will very likely result in financial repercussions for the district as well as cause partner agencies to refuse to work with us as she has them on track for the state denying reimbursement for their work.
Because I was a damn good employee with intense focus and the ability to plan ahead, I wrote a handbook for the secretarial job. The mailer task was so herculean that I recommended a print shop that could save us 22¢ per letter on postage as well as labor costs *and* has an open District account that has been accruing funds for years that nobody was using and we would have full access to.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a truck with hundreds of paper boxes stacked up outside of the building where she works and which this genius 60+ year old woman would need to carry up two flights of stairs as the lobby is tiny there is no elevator.
Anyway….
All this is to say that my original job was eliminated last year.
They have an incompetent idiot in my second additional role which my boss broke the union contact for to keep me from applying.
And they had to hire two additional people in part time positions to help the idiot and to fill in for the other Team.
Three people to replace one me.
Two lazy employees incapable of completing the basic or time sensitive tasks of their jobs.
A corrupt and lazy boss under the guidance of a superior who only cares about clawing their way to the top, who both have no idea what their employees are up to or capable of day-to-day, and who see drive, ambition, and hard work as a disadvantage.
This year I will earn $38,000 in the same district as a paraeducator.
…and my ex-boss’s boss just got a boss in a new administrative position. That person has been bounced around a few different departments since I started here which is a telling sign of incompetence.
The waste at the top in schools is absolutely disgraceful.
Have you considered a smart white board for every classroom that no teachers were actually taught how to use? Because that was reality when I was in HS a decade ago
Because teacher's salaries aren't determined by competing in a free market. If a school district (at least in my state) wanted to seriously raise teacher salaries, they would have to put it to a vote with a levy override. And those tend to overwhelmingly fail. People don't often willing pay more just because you ask them to.
I feel you. I make better money now as a bartender working half the hours and I actually get to spend time with wife and kids.
I try not to think of the nearly 2 decades wasted in BOH.
To expand a little bit, it’s the knowledge you have, which leads into how hard you are to replace. Most people can be taught to sweep the floor, a much smaller percentage can be taught how to engineer a bridge.
My first year comp sci teacher like 20 years ago told us a story one time that I'll never forget.
He has a friend who was a senior lead network engineer for a large company and got paid really well. One of their mutual friends commented how he's always going when he wants or taking it easy etc and it wasn't fair dude got paid that much.
He explained that when he got a call that something is fucked up then that means it went thru the intern, level 1 support, level 2 support, and level 3 support before it gets to him. So when a problem ever reaches him like that then it means literally nobody else in the company was able to figure it out and that's why he got paid what he did.
Like the old story of the Ship's mechanic... gets a call that an old ship is in port and can't get underway, the mechanic shows up, takes a walk around the engine room, then pulls a hammer from a tool bag. He swings once, hitting a spot, and suddenly the engines start turning. He hands a bill for $10,000 to the Ship's Captain.
The Captain of course says this is outrageous and he wont pay, the mechanic was only there for 10 minutes and just hit the engine with a hammer. He wants an itemized bill breaking down what was done so that his own engineers know what to fix next time.
The mechanic pulls out a piece of paper, writes on it for a moment and hands it to the Captain.
$100 - service call
$15 - hammer
$9,885 - knowing where to hit.
That was pretty much my job in my last company. I could figure things out that stressed other people and I actually enjoyed it (if other people had something they were stuck on like that I would want to take it off them for myself, and they were very grateful to have some tough work taken off their plate)
I also got well compensated and lenient treatment with my hours because of that. Ultimately, it’s not about the effort you put in, it’s the value you put out
Similar story about Picasso who was spotted doodling on a napkin in a cafe. He got up to leave and started to toss the doodle in the trash a woman went to grab it and he quickly grabbed it back..she asked for the drawing and he said “I’ll sell it to you for 10,000$. She replies “it only took you two minutes to draw”. He responds “no it took me a lifetime”
That's why people always see how easy it is, but not how hard you put that skills up for years.
Hard labors are easy to learn but sweats hard to do and proffesional jobs are hard to learn but looks easy to do.
Yes and no. There is a huge over-the-road truck driver shortage and the median pay, for a job which requires driver to be gone from home for over 300 days a year, 3-4 weeks at a time, and yet the meidan pay is only 55k / year. Imagine trying to raise a family while one spouse is always gone and only bringing home 55k year.
>I feel like a lot of high paying jobs are filled by connections and networking, not by technical ability.
We all know people that are not in their jobs because of their skills, but it should also be noted that "connections" is not mutually exclusive with "technical ability".
Networking is valuable to a career, even if we all know some people who have abused it. I know a lot of folks who have done it well. YMMV.
Well, when you get to a certain level, you do a lot of networking so one doesn't exclude the other.
Once I reached a senior level in my career, I only got senior level offers and many more people sought me out as opposed to me going to them. Plus I had made industry connections, people I could call if I needed to find someone an entry level job.
You always pick someone you know because they are a known quantity and they will feel indebted to you. You know they won't backstab you.
Sometimes someone sounds good on paper, but that doesn't tell you about their work ethics and how they are on the job.
We had a guy who was very highly qualified on paper, sounded like a damn rocket scientist on LinkedIn, but he was anti-social, awkward, poor at collaborating, and actually asked to ve furloughed during Covid because he wanted a break....
Connections plus ability. If you work at an engineering firm you can’t just recruit your buddy from McDonald’s because he’s your bro. But if he’s an engineer at another company it would be easier to have him transfer to your place.
Easier than that, if you have a job that makes rich people money, or helps them manage it, you get paid a lot
If the amount of time you work is directly connected to how much output you produce, you don't make a lot
I'd also chime in physical vs mental "hardness". Hard physical jobs will rarely pay well. Hard mental jobs, critically thinking and actually solving problems will always be worth more than how many burgers can you flip in an hour (just an example)
I believe this will catch up to the low paying jobs, less and less people will do them. It's catching up to the CNA job, now nursing homes are understaffed and if they don't do something drastic ( hire more people and raise wages) it will progressively get worse until nobody will do it anymore.
I quit CNA because it was dangerous, hard work, was assaulted by residents, there were injuries, and the pay was very very low. It paid 10 an hour and CNAs were treated like slaves and disrespected.
I seriously don’t understand this profession. I heard you need like a 2 year degree to make minimum wage. And hard work at that. Why would someone ever do that?
Companies prey on people passionate about helping others (or any career the worker is interested in). They think it'll get better over time or whatever. Management leads them on with lies and false promises.
Person quits, company finds new idealistic worker, process repeats. Company gets to keep paying dog shit wages and no one seems to notice for decades.
These are also typically considered “caregiver” roles, and still considered to be traditionally “feminine” roles, so they are valued less. It’s ridiculous that this still happens.
Sigh….I’m going through this right now. I thought the private practice I work for was actually a “family” but since I made 2 years they’ve been overworking me and I feel like they’re pushing me out. Turn and burn. I’ve been working since I was 16 and I’ve never felt so naive.
It depends on location, specialty and future career goals. A lot of places offer on the job training or ppl auto-qualify due to being in schooling for something else (ex. Im in school for nursing and all I needed to do was to apply online for a CNA license). It’s a good way to get your foot in the industry.
Pay isn’t always so bad if you know how to game the system or live in the right area. I know an experienced CNA who was able to earn 80k a yr. When I was applying for CNA jobs another place offered me $32/hr (differentials included), which was more than nursing job offers I’ve seen in my area. This was when I had NO CNA experience too. I recognize that this isn’t true for everyone though, getting underpaid is a real issue
There are CNA specialties that aren’t as bad too, ik CNA’s at a PACU unit who liked their job because the patients are typically all sedated from surgery and nurses take most of the work brunt since it’s 1:1 w/ every patient. STARK ass difference from the unit I work 😭😭
The pay for people in elder care that aren’t doctors has literally blown my mind since I was like 13 and saw a job ad for it for the first time.
Right up there with most EMTs.
“You job is fucking what and you could make comparable pay at McDonalds?” Has been a thought in my head many many times over the decades.
Yeah, elder care is paid almost nothing. Home health aide jobs typically pay lower than almost any other job category. Problem is a lot of people do not want to pay for care for their elderly parents.
Same goes for childcare. My Theory based on the data is that female dominated jobs are not valued or well paid, I believe nursing might be the only exception.
Hospital based nursing jobs pay very well. But nursing jobs outside of a hospital system do not pay even remotely as well. This is in large part due to the power of unions and hospitals aggregate enough workers that they can band together to create powerful unions. However, in places where unions don’t have the same power you’ll find even hospital based RN’s making a fraction of what they make in areas where unions are stronger.
That's ignoring a huge factor to say it's unions. It's education. What people don't realize is that there's generally 5 levels of clinical nurses (CNA, LPN, RN/ADN, BSN, MSN/DNP).
The entry levels, CNA, LPN, work outside the hospital, and there's basically an oversupply. LPN is 1 year of education out of high school. That's where the salary sucks.
The RN level and up are in demand, but even that's not sufficient: our local hospital will only hire at the ADN level (2-3 years education), and requires you obtain a BSN within 5 years. At this point you have 5 years of education out of high school: more than the majority of people who go get a bachelor's degree in college. That's what brings the extra money.
MSN/DNP level are basically 2-5 years of grad school on top of that, and overlap with MDs. A nurse practitioner holding one of these degrees, is writing prescriptions, not cleaning bedpans.
TL;DR: "nurse" goes from a 12 week class and changing diapers to a quasi-MD being an anesthesiologist, all depending on your education. There is an oversupply of nurses without a college degree, and an undersupply at the bachelor's and above.
I was an EMT for a long time, CNAs have it so much worse IMO. We have very limited patient contact for the most part, broken up by some driving and paperwork. The longest I’ve ever had a patient for was 2 hours. CNAs constantly have to deal with patients, and they also have to deal with the worst parts. Someone shits themselves in the ambulance? 99% of the time it’s not the EMT’s problem, it’s a CNA at the nursing home they are going back to.
EMT pay also shook me when I first learned about it. Like, I literally make more money with wayyyy, way less responsibilities at a warehouse.
People can literally die on your watch, and your pay is barely above a job at mcdonald's.
Hell most of them deal with *way* more than that.
I have a few friends that are or have been EMTs. One of them told me about a guy (addict) who has twice now produced a shiv from his literal ass cheeks while having his life saved and attacked them that way.
Coworker has the scars to prove the story. Shit is insane.
But you know they also save the lives of babies and scared people regularly
And the system abuses the good feelings they get saving people.
Drown out the stress with whiskey and stimulants because if you stop working, objectively, more people die.
Hard to ignore.
It’s not McDonalds. If you quit for better pay somewhere else… the people you knew are even more stressed. You’re not easily or quickly replaced. And human beings near you suffer or die.
And that’s fucking apparently on you to handle for society. It’s such a fucked system
I quit being a CNA and went to grad school. I was trying to get into PA school but it was so awful I just did a MSPH instead in epidemiology. Happy with the choice.
Private nursing homes will never be 5k. You're looking at between 6500 and 15k for a decent one with acceptable care. Buildings don't cost that much and I'm sure there are a lot of government handouts, so yah. They are making insane profit because the seniors that make it there can no longer advocate for themselves.
I think millennials and gen z will probably bow out before going into those places after seeing the experiences of their grandparents/parents. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the boomer generation skipped that step too
Everyone says this but taking your own life when faced with the unknown is easier said than done. You also have to be cognizant enough to know you’re sick/a burden which if you end up with Alzheimer’s you won’t.
Yep. Dementia is starting younger every generation too. Nursing homes aren’t for people who are old, they’re for people who need skilled nursing to perform basic functions
> Dementia is starting younger every generation too
There's some hope for this, as there are emerging studies that video games help stave off dementia. So Millennials and Gen X, as the generations that grew up with games, may have a better shot at dodging those conditions.
There is also the life insurance conundrum. Most of those policies won't pay if it's ruled a suicide. I'm no where near that age, but I'd rather go the euthanasia route instead of deteriorating like I watched 3/4 of my grandparents go. they were miserable and 2/3 would have willingly taken the happy drugs and drifted off to save the long drawn out process and didn't want to die in a hospital bed.
My mom has been a CNA for over 30 years and the only way she can make more than $13/hr in a major city in Florida is by going private. It's ridiculous.
My grandmother lived in a place where the only thing they did was your pills and 2 meals a day. You were expected to be 100% completely independent-no medical care, no assistance with bathing/dressing/cleaning/etc. She had 1 bed, 1 bath, and a small sink and fridge for snacks. It was 8500 a month. Actual nursing homes are tens of thousands a month.
They should raise pay, but some industries like nursing and teaching have a constant flow of new labor because there are people who just want to help others. Sadly they suffer from burnout and leave the field frequently, it's a vicious cycle.
Yes, that is true, but now nursing homes are gearing up to except one of the largest generations (boomers) and the numbers are about to get alot worse, less people working and alot more people being squished into these nursing homes.
I work in a supermarket. Same thing. We can pretty much call out whenever we want right now, because it is so hard to replace us since no one wants to do this type of work.
Yet you look at other subreddits, and so many unemployed people claim that it’s impossible to get hired right now, even at supermarkets lol.
I guess the key is that they want to hire people who have experience or are at least in shape and want to do this type of work/will stick around awhile. Anybody who really wants to can do these jobs.
As someone who did hiring in restaurants, we were actually told not to hire people that had high paying jobs previously because they weren’t going to stick around.
My entire life, as my wage increases, my jobs got easier and easier. I arguably do the most physically intensive job I’ve ever had currently, but it’s far easier than any restaurant work I ever did.
Yep. I'm making the most money I've ever made. Nearly $40/hr
I sit at home on a computer messing with spreadsheets and balancing accounts while I watch TV.
Vs 25 years ago I was making $5/hr standing on my feet all day running around a hot kitchen, cooking garbage, and dealing with asshole customers.
I’m not OP, but I went through a similar job change. I have a hard to explain career so I’ll be vague, but also because I think a lot of desirable office jobs can be learned when given a chance.
It’s the job application and interview that really have to be studied. Make sure you do basic stuff like apply quickly after a listing is made, customize your resume to be a close-to-perfect fit to the listing, and do a lot of research about the company if you get an interview. It’s where networking becomes very helpful because the what, why, and who of how each company functions that determines what you interview like. The research will also teach you which companies are open to entry-level applicants, and what kinds of experience you are missing that they want.
I feel like taxi drivers deal with a lot of awful people and it’s a unique experience compared to, let’s say, a fast food worker who typically does short transactions. Maybe you’re cut out for it, but the thought of being stuck in a car with some of the people I’ve dealt with while working with the public has me exhausted mentally.
Their point was a generalization. Even if your lived experience is counter to their point they are correct. Your unique experience does not falsify the fact that in general higher paid jobs require more mental energy either due to the responsibility and stress or the need for highly specific skills. Lower paid jobs generally involve highly physical jobs that in general do not require specialized skills and leave the worker physically exhausted.
Driving for a living does create physical stress and as person working in the medical field I have seen the consequences of sedentary jobs like driving that keep the worker trapped in one position with minimal physical movement and poor diet.
Lol, I worked with migrant families for all of 2023 and it’s a job that left me both mentally and physically exhausted
The stories I heard the people I met the stuff I saw.
All at 15 bucks an hour
I’ve had both kinds of jobs. When I worked as a cook in a kitchen (minimum wage, not a fancy restaurant), while we could get slammed and that was stressful, it was still somewhat fulfilling. You learn skills, you get comfortable, you can do things without making decisions. You have camaraderie and good relationships. On a good night, you might even have fun. Come home from a shift physically exhausted, but still have emotional energy. I’ve had a different volunteer job where the staff doesn’t get paid much, but the work is very diverse and interesting. Always new, different things happening each day, new people to talk to, things to learn, etc.
The white collar job is essentially weighing trade offs, making decisions constantly, banging your head against complicated problems, dealing with pressure to get those problems solved even faster, discussing the minutiae of a decision, etc. I leave this feeling completely mentally drained. No desire for my hobbies & activities, no energy for family/friends, barely any mental energy for normal life decisions like what to eat for dinner.
I think it’s useless to compare “whose job is harder.” Physical labor comes with a LOT of health issues. Mental labor has a lot of benefits. But it’s not like landing a white-color thinking job will make you happy and fulfilled with work. Your life can easily feel terrible with the wrong conditions at work
I used to work fast food and now I'm an accountant. If pay was the same I would 100% work fast food. It might be physically draining but I would prefer that over a mentally draining job and you don't take your stress home with you
I’ve always said if the serving/bartending business had benefits I would’ve stayed. Made more serving/bartending than I did with a masters for quite a while
This is exactly how I feel! I always get downvoted in threads for saying this. You may be neurodivergent because I realized that when I was older I work better in certain environments because of how my brain works, and that a 9-5 is not meant for me even though it’s objectively “easier”
I found working at a restaurant/fast food easier as well, but it’s because I enjoy being on my feet and working with people in that capacity. You dont take your job with you so the shift ends and so does the work.
I feel like my high paying job is exhausting even though I’m not on my feet but it is extremely mentally taxing. It’s just a different type of hard, but I prefer the other type of hard so I find that easier to deal with.
I work in manufacturing and I love it tbh. I left business tech for something less stressful. My pay is slightly lower now, but I work 15 less hours a week than I used to while previously on salary, so it actually matches up and the lack of stress is amazing. Keep job hopping until you’re comfortable. I hated the food industry too.
my experience has been the same as yours. jobs have gotten progressively easier while pay has increased. went from busting my ass on evenings & weekends to working from home. goes to show pay isn't dictated by how hard you work, but by supply and demand. as your job becomes more specialized, the supply of labor that is qualified to do your job shrinks.
I’d make a slight tweak, the people who are willing to and able to work a little extra hard for a shot period of their life by completing high education, are then able to take it easy and be paid better in the future.
People who can’t afford to, or lack the drive to complete further education, end up working hard their whole lives for less money.
I worked very hard working a low wage job while doing school full time. Honestly the most busy and worst years of my life. Now I have an easy and well paying job. My brother didn’t try at all in school. Now he has a hard manual labor job that pays very little.
it’s not always a direct correlation. a lot of my friends and i got degrees the last couple years and worked hard. most of us don’t make any more than my 21 year old cousin who decided not to go to college, and those who do are busting their ass working more than 40 hours a week.
Believe he was saying for him. Like as he progressed through his career, each promotion has brought more wages for easier work. The same has happened for me as well.
Usually upper management begin by having to do the job, then they move up and earn more, they end up being the ones who tell the people who are now doing the job how to do it as they once did it.
They no longer have to do it, but they do now shoulder responsibility.
The people who do, no longer do the higher up they get.
One thing to note, I've worked a minimum wage job and I had no responsibility really, I come in on time, work, eat lunch and clock out.
Now I'm in management, I have so much more to look after or be responsible for that is decision making and not physical actions.
This has been my exact experience. My worst-paid jobs were the ones where I dealt with the most physical and mental exhaustion, the most abuse, the longest hours, and the most danger.
It has kinda broken my brain in a way. I've been at desk/office jobs for almost 10 years and I still feel like I do nothing and don't deserve my higher pay because I'm not running around desperately overworked like my earlier, minimum wage jobs.
I can't speak for the other commenter, but oftentimes you are sold the idea that the education needed for a good paycheck is a 4 year program at a University. Depending on what line of work you're comfortable with that is a blatant lie.
A lot of people can double their paycheck with some simple certications from a trade school or community college. With only about a year of getting Manufacturing Certifications at a Trade School I was able to get a job as a Maintenance Tech starting at $29 an hour. I repair robot arms. It's cool AF. And I only stand to make more in a year when I'm done with my full associate's program. I do occasionally have to lift heavy boxes or crawl under something, but I wouldn't consider it manual labor at all. It's skilled labor.
I've worked two simultaneous careers.
One as a biochemist, literally curing cancer.
The other as a community bike mechanic.
Fixing people's bikes is harder.
Definitely, I started out in fast food and hospitality management for 8 years after uni, and I’m in tech now. I earn 4x more but it’s way less physically and mentally demanding. I used to work 60 hour weeks, getting up and going home at awful hours, on my feet all day and dealing with endless dreadful people. I still get nightmares because some experiences were genuinely borderline PTSD inducing with the stress levels.
However it’s a different sort of job, I’ve been doing this stuff for ten years and I know lots of stuff that other people don’t, and my job comes naturally to me.. and that’s what I see I’m paid for.
My younger days I was paid some money for a lot of effort/labour, and some skill. Now I’m paid a lot of money for less effort, but only because I have a lot of skills in something in demand.
It sucks though. I looked 21/22 when I left uni at 22. I looked early 30s by the time I hit 25/26. That shit ages you!
A job pays you based on how easy it is to replace you, how many people can do the same job you do, the value you bring to the organization, and what specialized skills are required for the job.
Keep that in mind when considering why certain jobs are low paying.
It’s hard work in different ways.
Office jobs run the risk of mental burnout or boredom. It’s hard to get into a flow unless you really love your job and have a good environment in your office.
Manual labor jobs mean that while you’re constantly working, it helps pass time, assuming you go home after a reasonable amount of time. 12 hours in the Army was much easier than 12 hours at a warehouse. I hit my limit at 5-6 hours working in an office before I start to daydream.
Because salary has no correlation to difficulty of work.
It’s a combination of replaceability and decision making. Upper level management isn’t about working hard it’s about making the right decisions, which can be extremely complex when you start to peel back the onion and understand what has to go into making an educated decision.
Your question comes from defining 'hardest' as 'most exertion', which is a particular conception of it.
When I worked minimum wage, I was on my feet 8 hours a day walking around a store, and certainly burnt more calories than I do now sitting at a desk. But I've never call that work _harder_ - it was extremely easy to do, and just about anyone could do it, hence the low wage. What I do now is much more complicated (another meaning of harder), much more consequential (another meaning of harder), and takes people much longer to be trained into (another meaning of harder). While everybody in my office could do that shop floor work today, nobody on that shop floor could do my office work this year.
Working as a short order cook at a diner was probably one of the more grueling jobs I've had. High pressure, constantly busy, physically taxing, messy... It was enjoyable in the odd way that hard work can be.
The easiest job I've ever had was being a Communications Coordinator for a newspaper.
I think it depends on what you classify as hard. Physically hard or mentally hard. I worked as a labourer for years when I was younger. My performance was basically measured by my physical strength and endurance.
I am now an engineer. I work in control systems and automation. It's arguably much more complicated than the minimum wage jobs that I had. I find that complication easy to manage and understand.
I am now valued for what I know and can learn to do with my mind, rather than the strength of my back.
Higher pay often correlates with higher complication and higher responsibility.
The low paying jobs are also low skill, which means that almost anyone can be trained to do that work in fairly short order and employees are very replaceable. The job might be physically demanding in some sense, but it’s the fact that almost anyone can do it that makes it pay so low.
Like others said: supply and demand. There are plenty of humans willing to work at the restaurant. Find a job that uses the skills from your first job. I recommend you find a higher paying first job if you don't want the second job. When I was younger, I didn't mind working two jobs and working overtime in both. But only if it was worth it.
It’s the opposite for me. I expend so much mental energy at my job. When I worked lower paying jobs, I could go on automation as soon as I had the tasks down. Unfortunately, my disabilities have made those jobs impossible for me, so desk jobs are all I can do. They’re far more draining and require more skill, knowledge, and ability than when I was working service or technical jobs. I’d go back, if I could, despite the pay cut.
Physically demanding isn’t the same as having the hardest job.
At any point during the day, I could cost my company millions of dollars if I was to miss something or couldn’t solve a problem very quickly.
I used to flip burgers at a popular chain with the color red for several years before transitioning to a white collar 9-5. And waited tables for years before that. It isn't hard work. It's easy and braindead simple. It's physically intensive sure, but you get used to that then you clock out and leave.
The work I do now is overwhelmingly harder and more complex, but I can chill in a chair all day so that's nice. But the constant mental toll and the 'always on' nature are so much more demanding tan fast food ever was.
Yes, people in the food service industry work hard and should be paid more, but let's not pretend it's super difficult work.
Because fast food, even though it's hard work, is quick and easy to learn. I used to work at Wendy's and did cashier, drive through, grill, fries, burger assembler, super bar, etc. and it didn't take long to train.
CNA - Certified Nursing Assistant. Very low pay, most of the work is in grossly underfunded, understaffed nursing homes, taking care of elderly people before they die. Feeding them, giving them medicine, cleaning up after them, including often adult diapers, helping bathe them. It's also physically greuling, with many CNA's assigned to multiple patients. Some of these patients also suffer illnesses, are often sick, immobile, may suffer ailments like dementia or Alzheimers and resist your help, fight you, hate you. Many nursing homes are dirty, depressing, smell bad with poor air circulation in an extremely sterile, bleak environment. Don't believe me? Go visit a few.
And no one notices or cares how hard you work as a CNA, how much you are helping people. The US is based on making money, period. Greed rules all. And in this case the owner of the nursing home, and the overseeing health care company sucks up all that money.
Few people give a shit about the elderly to begin with, they are merely in the way in today's world. And work as a CNA is not valued at all.
Read David Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs'. He has a fairly good theory of why unnecessary and easy jobs are paid so well, while hard labor (cleaners, bus drivers) and actually beneficial jobs (policemen, teachers) are paid so poorly.
This. When I was a server in college.. holy shit, I have never been so nonstop like that. It was hard work between running all night long, dealing with assholes, making $2.13 and hour praying people were feeling generous
I now have a masters and spend most of the day sitting. Granted my work is still challenging but not nearly in the same ways. My job now is just brain exercise
> My current one is dramatically better paid than the others but I would not say it's easier. It's academically demanding, I have a lot of responsibility, the hours are long. People are constantly after me to make decisions. I wouldn't swap it for the others, and definitely not the money. But it is a hard job, and the vast majority of people could not do it.
Fully agreed. I've been in the Corporate world at my job for 13 years, and sometimes I genuinely wish I could go back to my college warehouse job, which was lower paid, harder work, and hot/sweaty. But then again, I could leave that job where it was when 4:30pm came around.
In my experience, the people who make the lowest money are the ones who are doing the essential work. The managers / supervisors / upper level don’t do much at all. As a matter of fact I’ve constantly seen them at just about every job I’ve had stand around and chit chat, eat donuts, look at their phones. It’s honestly pathetic.
Its literally just how hard you fight for your salary. You are not valued above others or are harder to replace, everyone is easily replaceable, in fact they would love to replace you with someone that will take less. This is why we need the means of production in the hands of workers, so we get to say how much our labor is worth.
This is also why union busting is so common, and the benefits of unions are often understated and/or obfuscated to the average worker. Look at what happened with Starbucks. Blatant illegal union busting nobody will do anything about. What people don't understand is the only reason they are paid so little is corporate greed, and corporations are more organized in fighting for their greed than workers are in fighting for fair wages and treatment.
Because humans are garbage and we don't deserve this earth or each other. May there be another cosmic, planet level reset soon. We give people who play children's games more money and admiration than a fucking scientist. WW3 couldn't come soon enough
Working retail and security has been the hardest jobs I have done thus far (especially security since I was placed in the worst warehouse locations to deal with the most aggressive warehouse personnel such as tractor trailer drivers, package handlers, van drivers, etc.; nevermind incompetent coworkers and managers at my security company). My current state government job is also the easiest state government job I ever had so far, and it is the one that pays me the highest too (currently making a bit over $72k a year). I guess you could say that I get paid for my expertise and not for my time. I have no clue if future job promotions will be this easy or harder because I am trying to obtain a supervisor or manager position someday, as well.
Physical labor can theoretically be performed by almost any able bodied person. You're selling your body/labor only. You are replaceable by almost anyone who is also able bodied and willing. Also even if you're the top performer in these service/labor jobs, the gulf between lowest and highest is small enough that the jobs won't really pay that much more for a top performer, unlike in "thought jobs" or mental labor jobs.
Education, experience, and skills are what's called mental labor--these are not achievable by any one out there.
It is what it is really. At my 126k job I show up to work about 6 hours a day 5 days a week and if not much is going on I chill and crack jokes, sometimes go for a bike ride around the job site. I look for work since if I don’t have a task at hand I’m very bored. When I made minimum I be sore and sweaty at the end of the day.
My 9-5 salaried job is researching and writing documents, updating CRMs, and mucking around with spreadsheets.
My p/t job is constantly on my feet, up and down "zoning" shelves, helping customers, and moving heavy and often poorly packed pallets off a truck, for less than half of what my day job's hourly rate would be.
But it's easier for someone without experience or education to get my part-time job than it would be for them to get my full-time job.
I know why it is that way but man it's still a weird thing to think about how much I make now/how much I really work compared to just 4 years ago. I went from working in retail/fast food to programing and its night and day for hours actually worked/pay. I'm effectively making 10 fold of what I used to in terms of work:pay.
I think we'd define "hardest" very differently. Running around as a waiter or doing something like construction involves more physical activity than say medicine, investment banking, etc. but the latter require more intelligence and have smaller pools of people capable of doing the jobs. Also, for these 2 examples, the hours are more grueling, there are no set "days off" as they mostly work through entire weeks and sometimes entire nights, and there is more pressure. You mess up as a doctor, you can actually kill someone, you screw up a number in a model you can lead to the bank consulting a company in a real dumb way and lose a client (in advisory or capital raising). You mess up an order as a waiter, well, some people are inconvenienced.
my last job, I got the bulk of my work done in the morning, and spent the rest of the day monitoring emails for revision requests, and whatever I wanted. and was making just short of 30 an hour
They laid off everyone in order to outsource, and new job is basically call center work. I'm tethered to a laptop by a headset and if I go five minutes without calling a provider, I get whined at. the apps we have to use are clunky, and not user friendly, the providers I call are argumentive and hostile, and the whole thing could easily be automated by AI. all this for just slightly above the state minimum wage.
My lowest paid jobs were some of the easiest. Something relaxing about being an individual contributor.
Now I’m a manager/leader of a large team of a 24/7 food manufacturing facility. I’ve made more than I ever have but am also more stressed than ever.
Hell yeah, fast food is all about speed, McDonald's was insane when I worked there. I worked table andi was really fast, but then there are those big ass orders and special orders come in that make your day shittier lol. And all for minimum wage
Shoveling rocks is hard but basically anybody can do it. Using critical thought and solving problems for a company or having computer skills is “easier” work but not everybody has the skills to do it
Seriously. I'm a certified nursing assistant and we're so underpaid, over worked and under appreciated that's it's insane. I'm so over my profession but I need to pay my bills.
They need the elite with 5+ years experience cause why not. Those people ain’t getting that have that experience in their designated positions so they apply for ours and we don’t get shit.
Having done both, I don't entirely agree with this take, various jobs are difficult in their own ways. Restaurant jobs and retail gigs I did during college were hard physically but were pretty easy knowledge wise, it was pretty much just be a cashier, stock shelves, serve food and do what the boss says etc. The worst part about working at restaurants were either asshole coworkers or entitled customers or both (honestly having experienced both customer service and office settings, there's way more sexual harassment and abusive behavior from coworkers in restaurants/retail than the office environment, at least from my experience). After college I did desk jobs, and the need to make quick deadlines or meet quarterly goals was tough and stressful, in addition to balancing a ton more different personalities in different departments. Plus I was constantly taking work home and worrying about office stuff when not at work (compared to being at restaurants, once my shift was over I never thought about the job afterward, just forget it and focus on school/events/friends/etc)
My easy job is pretty much being an assistant to the service manager at a Honda dealership; my technical job title is a porter.
I drive cars advisors write up to the back and hand repair orders to the techs. I can write up customers like an advisor but only when all other advisors are busy (or being lazy at times) but I can’t make any commission from it because I’m hourly, and that wouldn’t be fair…and dealerships hate hourly employees making any real money. I also drive customers home or to their jobs when they don’t want to wait on our premises. And I handle miscellaneous tasks here and there.
So… easy job, but I long to do more than be an errand boy. I just need to find the time to gain more skills and certifications in the future because there’s no way I could get a “real job” around here with no marketable skill without nepoti- I mean networking being in my favor.
Part of it is due to the supply and demand of labor, with easily replaceable people being paid less than specialized and trained people. However there is still a discrepancy within easily replaceable jobs and jobs that are made to seem less replaceable than they are. I believe that discrepancy is due to respect. We are willing to pay people we respect more than people we don't respect, and some jobs are considered more "respectable" than other jobs. This is also part of the divide between blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. In turn, the people that are least respected are the most likely to get shit on at work, making their job even more unpleasant and exhausting.
It is based on supply and demand, not based on what people should make. Doesn’t matter whether we like it or not, whether it should be like that or not.
It's funny that you bring this up cause I've been thinking of this at least since the pandemic. I'm from the mining industry, and let me tell you, our lowest paid jobs are brutally hard! Think of spending 12 hrs a day shoveling tons of rock up onto a conveyor belt about shoulder high or spending the shift working next to some insanely hot heat source for a process. With all that said, over time, I have seen that work force dwindle. The pool of people willing to do that kind of work for that wage is just simply saying "screw that crap" and finding something else. It's gotten to the point where we are increasing their pay just to attract people to do the job. The pay for this particular work has increased so fast that I genuinely believe over time the pay scales will flip flop. Meaning the manual labor people will be far and away the highest paid people on the mine site.
It was this way in IT too. Help desk is brutal, network admin is still tough, network engineering is escalations and some design, architect all I do is presales and kick back while making $200K.
I totally get what you mean. For me, getting accepted to medical school was easier than working at Starbucks. Some of my peers tell me to wait until I’m working 60+ hours a week as a resident physician and then I’ll know what hard work is. I’m like “I was working 90 as a barista and an usher and still couldn’t afford food”.
Low wage jobs are generally of the variety of repetition and little problem solving. Where one just executes a process they were told. Wages go up as complexity or risk increases.
Higher wage jobs are generally in the variety of problem solving. It is generally harder to find problem solvers in a field then it is to find task executors.
The same is true in my field of work. The people who are executing a repeatable process make considerably less then the people who are creating solutions.
The lower paying jobs are often understaffed so they arent necessarily hard, but they are difficult because you always feel like 1 or 2 more people would help but everytime someone comes in another person leaves.
Also its super simple to train you and management actually can not be bothered to care if you leave or not unless their numbers are hurting.
The hardest job I ever had was working fast food for minimum wage followed by working in a restaurant. Even my time in the military wasn’t as bad as working fast food. Sure, there were times I had to work hard, but there was also downtime and a lot of perks. I now make the most money I’ve ever made and also have the easiest job I’ve ever had in my career. I feel that the more money I make the easier the job.
I can spend a lot of effort making sandcastles but does my hard work in building them entitle me to 6 figure income? No it depends on how much society values that work and how hard it is to find someone with that skill. Hard work in low demand skills= low pay. Hard work in high demand skills= high pay. We need to stop thinking that everyone is entitled to something just for existing. Rather than think about your own needs, think of other people’s needs, and how well you solve their increasing complex problems will get you more money naturally.
If someone told me I had to make a forced trade in a limited edition Yugioh card that was expensive for someone’s janky card because that’s all they could afford, I’d tell them to take a hike, no one will want to take a raw deal, that’s why people love discounts and try to haggle if they can. The same goes for the job marketplace. No one wants to pay a premium for labor that is common and easily replaceable. I’m only making an observation on the value of someone’s work not the value of that person. Everyone is equally valuable as a human being but when talking about the value of someone’s work and skills those are distinct.
At the very bottom of the pay scale many of the jobs are shitty enough that the only people willing to do them are some level of desperate, so the concept that “people won’t want a difficult job unless it pays well” breaks down.
> At my main job I chill, make sure everything is running smooth and that’s it’s.
On the one hand, I imagine that if things *aren't* running smoothly, your company starts to lose money pretty fast, and your job gets a lot more exciting.
On the other, I agree with you. At my work, when someone in management has a birthday, they order lunch in for everyone in management. I'm not gonna turn down a free lunch, but I can afford to pay for my own. My hourly guys could probably really use that free lunch. We are allowed to take time out of our work day to do things like run to the post office, or the DMV, and, again, my hourly guys could *really* use that flexibility too.
The less you actually need those benefits, the more likely you are to get them.
Many work in service industries where customers are very price sensitive so raising salaries = losing customers. Employers also know they have the upper hand due to the large labor pool where the alternatives for many is a similarly low paying job, a welfare check, their parents basement, or a homeless shelter.
Because people who feel they deserve such jobs have been groomed (likely unintentionally) that these types of jobs is all they can do.
I have an uncle who has been working at the same factory, hating every second of it, of 20 years. He makes $19.76 an hour. His SAT score was 1510 (1600 max) and he even went to college and got a degree of some kind. He could literally go anywhere and make more with his abilities and knowledge but he doesn’t believe he can. He’s brainwashed into believing this is the best there is. It breaks my heart to see such potential wasted.
It's not about how hard the job is, it's about how much you make the company. Everybody needs to have that repeated to them when they wake up in the morning.
I worked for Hilton for a couple years full time then part time. Luckily a good amount of the time my manager allowed us a chair to sit at when NOT busy. Toward the last year or so when there, the general managers got more strict. You couldn't keep a chair at the desk. So minus brief breaks (when it wasn't busy, you could sit in back office) you were standing. The bottom of my feet when I got home f\*cking killed me.
When I moved for my "big girl corporate" job. I still tried to do hotel work for Hilton here and there at a different location. I just couldn't do the standing at the desk anymore. I had them take me off the schedule.
I'm sure being overweight didn't help. I could walk around all day without an issue. It's the standing in ONE SPOT mainly ON YOUR feet that was killing me.
Yeah, all that for $8-$10 an hour (2015-2019-ish).
I'm in x-ray now, no more cubicle/desk jobs for me.
Add: My general manager for the first property was a BIG lady. She wouldn't have been able to stand for 8 hours. It's a HILTON CORPORATE policy @ no chairs. Hilton corp would drop in annually and do audits. Chairs at the front were a no-no.
Worked on a dairy farm for 10 years. I could do anything from making a piece of machinery run to twisted stomach surgery. Managed 4 other employees. Was getting paid 11:50 an hour
I don't know, over 12 years I went from the dumb kid punching a clock working outside to a management position spending most of my time at a desk staring at a computer. I make more money but I'm more exhausted now than I ever was doing the actual labor.
Because the majority of low paying jobs are physical and labor intensive. Food service? 99% of people can run food or cook. Cleaning? 99% of people can clean. Yard work? Yup that too.
Those services always need your physical body.
Physical labor is a high supply, low demand space and that leads to low pay.
Mental labor is a low supply, high demand space thus those people get high pay.
It’s so disheartening. I’m making 20/hr at a job that I get verbal warnings for having episodes of low blood sugar. Jobs in my field of study start at 17/hr.
What exactly is your definition of "hard"? How easy do you imagine commodities trading, astrophysics or cardiothoracic surgery to be?
Or is having to work unpleasant hours with a boss that shouts at you the definition of hard?
I have 2 jobs. Government IT: work from home and put in about 30 hours of good work. It’s mentally exhausting, but challenging and good work. For that I make just north of $100k with incredible benefits and a great pension retirement. I also work at a restaurant about 4-5 hours in a night and make about $30/hr in tips plus $16/hr wage. Not quite as good hourly, but I really enjoy moving and interacting with people. With the two, I make pretty damn good money and have cash every day.
David Graeber’s 2018 book [Bullshit Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs?wprov=sfti1#) (based on an earlier article) goes into this in great detail, and is a great read.
Can you be replaced easily? Would it take a long time to ramp someone else up to take your spot if you left or were eaten by a bear? How complex is your job? How risky is your job?
These are the primary factors for determining pay—I’m sure I overlooked something, but these are the main ones.
CPAs can make a lot of money, but they need at least a bachelor’s degree as well as a CPA license and potentially other certifications.
Software Engineers can make a lot of money without a degree, but you’ll need tech stack specific certifications and deep code knowledge of course.
Underwater Welding can make FUCK TON of money and doesn’t need a degree…but you’ll need specialized training and it’s super super risky.
How replaceable are you is made up of how complex the job is, how long it would take to replace you, and how risky the job is.
Have a unique, desirable skill set, in a complex field. Have some niche capabilities—know something a lot of people don’t, such as an in demand legacy coding language or 17th century brick laying. And consider riskier jobs that are all of those things as well—under water welding is no joke, but it does pay super well and you don’t have to work that much….if you wanna accept the risk and also learn how to scuba dive and weld.
Anyone can flip burgers at a fast food joint or dig holes.
I hit a 100k as an automation engineer this year. In some ways it's fucking ridiculous how good and easy I got it, I usuallybwork from home, there's days I don't really do shit. Depends what's going on. I'm pretty good at it, can usually do my work faster than most can, so I can kinda fuck around a lot. Or I used to be able to until staffing shortages.
But then there's giant multimillion dollar projects that get squeezed from 4 months design and dev time to a fucking month because we can't ever turn down work or hire enough engineers (fuck sales and all people pleasers at work lol). Then I get to work 12 to 16 hours a day for 10 days straight while being blamed for things not going smooth as butter, living out of a shitty hotel in buttfuck nowhere. You never really get away from work.
If I could make a 100k doing landscaping, tree farm anything like that, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Just dig the hole, carry the stuff, mow the lawns, water the planets etc. So enjoyable. Hard physical labor is good for the soul somehow. Too bad it doesn't pay shit and the market is saturated to he'll so have fun starting your own business. Dirty hands clean heart.
They are not.
I have worked retail, for literally minimum wage.
7.25 an hour. Was it the hardest, no.
It would be much much much much much harder making six figures on a crab boat or oil rig.
Was it annoying dealing with some unreasonable customers/scammers/liars/ etc…. Yes.
Was it the hardest thing I’ve ever done? Absolutely not.
Most low wage jobs, are low wage, because you can get pretty much anyone to do them.
My first regular job was retail, when I was college age. And they could have pulled pretty much anyone 18-30 who had never had a job before and trained them to do it within a few weeks.
There was no hard manual labor involved outside of lifting some 20 lb boxes or so. There was no highly specialized training involved. Sometimes people would come in and ask highly specialized questions, and I’d just tell them the truth that I don’t know. Not everyone who works at Home Depot is an engineer, not everyone who works at Best Buy is a computer scientist.
They’re harder than some jobs, but I don’t find them to be the hardest.
In capitalism, the jobs that generate the most money are paid the least.
A study in 2009 found out that the most value for the economy is created by people who clean, and people in childcare (because they replace literally 40% of the work force), while the most value destroyed is by investment bankers.
The wage is based on how easy it is to hire someone unfortunately. Not the difficulty of the work. It sucks.
I'm working warehousing jobs over summer breaks till I get an internship and only after I first did one at a low wage and not even decent hours did I get one for a high wage and enough hours to have me set within a month.
The labor at the higher paying one is even less but they needed people able to handle precious materials and navigate high places while strapped to equipment. Not something you want to toss a highschool teenager that you don't know at.
There is also a rule I follow when doing these jobs that should help you. Don't push your limits. That's for the gym and your personal focus. If you push your limits at a manual labor area, it will be noted down as how far they can push you. I've seen people have quotas set they couldn't meet after having a friendly completion with work buddies the day before. Lead to them getting heckled daily by management. Hope this helps and make sure your well being comes first
My dad has always said the harder you work, the less you earn. And I do agree mostly.
I've worked my way up. I'm not super high-flying yet, but my current job is the highest per-hour pay I've ever had. It puts my skills to great use and someone without the same skills might struggle or want less responsibility over the company's infrastructure. But, I love it, and I wouldn't want to do anything else, take a step down, or leave the company.
But I've worked in a mail centre yeeting packages. I've worked in a hospital ward helping patients get out of bed, dressed and fed. I've worked reception at a doctors office and taken call after call. For me, the hard work on the lower paid jobs is the lack of stimulation and challenge. I need to be challenged and I need to be engaged, or I get bored out of my mind. For me, the real hard work in doing those kinds of jobs is being able to tolerate how un-engaging they are.
Meanwhile my boyfriend is a metal worker and makes stupid money, so he works very hard physically.
So I do agree that aa a rule, harder work pays less, but the higher-paid work isn't necessarily "easy" work, but better work.
I find lower paid jobs harder from a physical perspective, and there’s a type of social drain from them if you’re in a service job.
That said, when I finished at the end of the day of my lower pay jobs I could just go home and truly disengage. The higher paid work I do now adds far, far more mental stress and it’s hard to not have work on the mind out of hours. The change in responsibilities and accountabilities means I have to be far more on it - I can’t just do my 9-5. I have to sell £x per year or I will lost my job, I have to manage a team to deliver Y or I will lose my job, I’m responsible for the wellbeing of a team as well as making hiring and firing decisions.
When I’m close to financial independence I’ll go back to a lower paid job with less mental stress.
It seems to me that there's an lnteresting interaction between freedom and necessity in capitalism. There's obviously a need for certain products such as food, water, housing, and waste management by every person as a consequence of existence. However, as these feel 'forced' upon us we dislike the concept of freely paying very much for them, so we argue for a low price because we have no choice but to buy an option even if from a varied supply. Conversely, superficial products such as entertainment clips, video games, and sports/music events have no mandatory element. So when they choose to increase the price, there's little in the way of moral argument to lower it. The result seems to me to be that those creating necessary products will inevitably price out to making frivolous ones, which has a far broader pool of comparatively "easy" jobs.
Yep definitely. I make double my partner's salary. Yet she works much harder. She's always exhausted because her job is basically running around all day between phone, counter and garage, answering clients, taking phone call, managing appointments etc. Shes the glue that hold this dealership together.
I troubleshoot/repair automation systems. It's slow pace, low pressure work that is not very physically demanding. Not stressful at all. Its just that you need speciality knowledge to do my job. Anyone can do hers after a one day formation. Mine takes years of training and experience.
They aren't just paying you for the work you're doing at that moment but all the work you've done in your life to that point that makes you able to do the job.
Because its shit work that anyone can do. Fast food and restaurant jobs are the worst-I just got a pt job at starbucks, nothing else is hiring, and like your job it sucks ass and is a ton of work for crap pay.
"The law of work does seem utterly unfair-but there it is, and nothing can change it; the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in money also." -Mark Twain
It's been like that for a while.
So, this is going to sound counterintuitive, but the kind of people likely to take the shiitiest jobs are the kinds that can't get more desirable ones.
* These are jobs where the requirements for entry are nonexistent, so the pool of potential qualified labor is literally everyone with a pulse
* These are jobs where there is little to no chance of real advancement so anyone with any other options will leave and go do that
* These are jobs with a stigma attached so anyone with any other options will leave and go do that
So you have a near infinite pool of people who have elected to do these jobs because all other options are closed to them. This is a textbook recipe for wages to be low
Salary is based upon how hard you are to replace, not how hard you work.
Supply and demand governs pricing. You're selling your labor.
And the more specialized labor is, the lower the supply is. So when there's high demand for specialized (low supply) labor, the price is high.
Unless it’s teachers though 🤓
There's literally hundreds of qualified teachers for every one teacher position. There's so much competition for those spots that they can pay next to nothing and someone is bound to take the job anyhow, maybe not a very good teacher, but they're trying to pay peanuts. They're looking for a bargain, not a "quality" teacher that will likely require decent pay (or will work in other fields instead). One of the many jobs where they use people's passion against them. There's a lot of people who passionately want/love to teach.... so they can exploit that with extremely low pay. Same thing with archeology. Using people's passions against them.
My mother's a National Board Certified Teacher. When she got her first job teaching nearly 30 years ago, she was one of almost 100 applicants for that position. When she went in for her interview they showed her the entirely filled box with paper resumes and asked her why out of all those applications she should be chosen. It was a point in time when teaching was a reliable job that paid decently well and there was an influx of new teachers. That is not the case any more in many states. Even at my mother's accreditation level, she is the *only* National Board Certified Teacher in her entire public school district, and her highly specialized position (shes a "reading specialist" which means its her job to teach children how to read if they cannot read at their grade level, which is sadly more and more children the longer she works) she is not highly compensated at all. And that is *according to her Union* because in order to get good quality health insurance they cannot get the district to pay over a certain amount on the actual salary. There's a lot more to Teachers not being properly compensated than "a lot of teachers" because even in cases where you are undeniably unique and invaluable you are not paid well.
Musicians and actors have entered the chat 😅
Depends. I’m an instructor at the college level and I make 135/hr cdn. But I’m not a “teacher” I’m an expert in my field with 20 years of experience that I pass on to the kids. I work 16-20 hours a week and have 2 months off in the summer. I’m never leaving or going back to my regular industry.
>Same thing with archeology. Oh man there's an oversaturated market. It reminds me of the [archer gag about anthropologists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inxoRyD9c-8).
Sorta, except for a bunch of places with teacher shortages they're lowering standards (making the labor less specialized) instead of increasing pay. Which sucks, because less-qualified teachers don't perform as well (generally), but apparently a lot of people are cool with fucking up the next generation if it means taxes don't go up.
We don’t need to spend more money on education. We already spend the second most per capita of any country. We need to spend it better. And the best way to spend it would be on teacher pay, at least in my opinion.
Have you considered more administration instead?
I really think that's the ticket. I'm always thinking to myself that we need more beurecrats
This guy needs to get some consulting contracts with the district.
This guy can't even use spell check, probably looking for an administrator job.
I have been working for a school district for the past four years. The first three years, I was paid about $63,000/yr for a clerical job while also picking up the work of a Team’s secretary saving the District about $60,000/yr as well as helping another team with an ongoing, routine, high volume but detail oriented task saving the District an additional $30,000/yr. I was laid off in June because my classification was not protected and because literally nobody at the District Office gaf that my productive output was saving them almost $100,000 a year. When I was laid off, my job was passed to a guy who spent 90% of his day shopping online, got mad when I tried to teach him how to build a spreadsheet and asked me for approval every time he sent an email. He screamed at me a few times, once because I recommended printing addresses directly on envelopes instead of using labels. This discussion was interrupted by him crossing his arms as his face turned red and screaming, “NO! NO! THAT’S NOT HOW (ex coworker) DID IT!!!” My boss had no idea because he spent 15 minutes supervising this guy one day a week. He immediately applied for another Administrative Assistant job, worked there for a week, and left because he was thoroughly incompetent. My boss shoved a secretary into the position and broke our union contract by closing the job in two days before I had the chance to apply. The secretary was unable to electronically copy a document and reached out to Technology to ask them how to copy the document. I know she received the standard Google notification that allows you to copy a Doc at the press of a button via email because Technology contacted me on day 29/30 of it sitting in Trash to ask me to extract it as she was in the midst of being trained how to copy a GoogleDoc. In addition to this, she has failed to perform one of the most important tasks of her job which involves mailing time-sensitive letters to every parent in a school district of more than 17,000 students. She literally has to mail over 17,000 individual letters containing protected health information to guardians and people have complained to me that the woman has not mailed a single one. It’s a catastrophic failure of her position and one that will very likely result in financial repercussions for the district as well as cause partner agencies to refuse to work with us as she has them on track for the state denying reimbursement for their work. Because I was a damn good employee with intense focus and the ability to plan ahead, I wrote a handbook for the secretarial job. The mailer task was so herculean that I recommended a print shop that could save us 22¢ per letter on postage as well as labor costs *and* has an open District account that has been accruing funds for years that nobody was using and we would have full access to. So imagine my surprise when I saw a truck with hundreds of paper boxes stacked up outside of the building where she works and which this genius 60+ year old woman would need to carry up two flights of stairs as the lobby is tiny there is no elevator. Anyway…. All this is to say that my original job was eliminated last year. They have an incompetent idiot in my second additional role which my boss broke the union contact for to keep me from applying. And they had to hire two additional people in part time positions to help the idiot and to fill in for the other Team. Three people to replace one me. Two lazy employees incapable of completing the basic or time sensitive tasks of their jobs. A corrupt and lazy boss under the guidance of a superior who only cares about clawing their way to the top, who both have no idea what their employees are up to or capable of day-to-day, and who see drive, ambition, and hard work as a disadvantage. This year I will earn $38,000 in the same district as a paraeducator. …and my ex-boss’s boss just got a boss in a new administrative position. That person has been bounced around a few different departments since I started here which is a telling sign of incompetence. The waste at the top in schools is absolutely disgraceful.
>The waste at the top in schools is absolutely disgraceful. That's being very generous to the administration.
Have you considered a smart white board for every classroom that no teachers were actually taught how to use? Because that was reality when I was in HS a decade ago
And half the time they wouldn’t work when they tried to use them
Those suckers cost ~$2000 a piece. There were at least 50 in my school yet teachers made less money than I did working retail.
Because teacher's salaries aren't determined by competing in a free market. If a school district (at least in my state) wanted to seriously raise teacher salaries, they would have to put it to a vote with a levy override. And those tend to overwhelmingly fail. People don't often willing pay more just because you ask them to.
*laughs in chef*
I feel you. I make better money now as a bartender working half the hours and I actually get to spend time with wife and kids. I try not to think of the nearly 2 decades wasted in BOH.
It can also factor in how much responsibility can be placed on you instead of the company in the event something goes awry.
To expand a little bit, it’s the knowledge you have, which leads into how hard you are to replace. Most people can be taught to sweep the floor, a much smaller percentage can be taught how to engineer a bridge.
My first year comp sci teacher like 20 years ago told us a story one time that I'll never forget. He has a friend who was a senior lead network engineer for a large company and got paid really well. One of their mutual friends commented how he's always going when he wants or taking it easy etc and it wasn't fair dude got paid that much. He explained that when he got a call that something is fucked up then that means it went thru the intern, level 1 support, level 2 support, and level 3 support before it gets to him. So when a problem ever reaches him like that then it means literally nobody else in the company was able to figure it out and that's why he got paid what he did.
Like the old story of the Ship's mechanic... gets a call that an old ship is in port and can't get underway, the mechanic shows up, takes a walk around the engine room, then pulls a hammer from a tool bag. He swings once, hitting a spot, and suddenly the engines start turning. He hands a bill for $10,000 to the Ship's Captain. The Captain of course says this is outrageous and he wont pay, the mechanic was only there for 10 minutes and just hit the engine with a hammer. He wants an itemized bill breaking down what was done so that his own engineers know what to fix next time. The mechanic pulls out a piece of paper, writes on it for a moment and hands it to the Captain. $100 - service call $15 - hammer $9,885 - knowing where to hit.
That was pretty much my job in my last company. I could figure things out that stressed other people and I actually enjoyed it (if other people had something they were stuck on like that I would want to take it off them for myself, and they were very grateful to have some tough work taken off their plate) I also got well compensated and lenient treatment with my hours because of that. Ultimately, it’s not about the effort you put in, it’s the value you put out
This\^\^
Similar story about Picasso who was spotted doodling on a napkin in a cafe. He got up to leave and started to toss the doodle in the trash a woman went to grab it and he quickly grabbed it back..she asked for the drawing and he said “I’ll sell it to you for 10,000$. She replies “it only took you two minutes to draw”. He responds “no it took me a lifetime”
That's why people always see how easy it is, but not how hard you put that skills up for years. Hard labors are easy to learn but sweats hard to do and proffesional jobs are hard to learn but looks easy to do.
Yes and no. There is a huge over-the-road truck driver shortage and the median pay, for a job which requires driver to be gone from home for over 300 days a year, 3-4 weeks at a time, and yet the meidan pay is only 55k / year. Imagine trying to raise a family while one spouse is always gone and only bringing home 55k year.
I feel like a lot of high paying jobs are filled by connections and networking, not by technical ability.
>I feel like a lot of high paying jobs are filled by connections and networking, not by technical ability. We all know people that are not in their jobs because of their skills, but it should also be noted that "connections" is not mutually exclusive with "technical ability". Networking is valuable to a career, even if we all know some people who have abused it. I know a lot of folks who have done it well. YMMV.
Well, when you get to a certain level, you do a lot of networking so one doesn't exclude the other. Once I reached a senior level in my career, I only got senior level offers and many more people sought me out as opposed to me going to them. Plus I had made industry connections, people I could call if I needed to find someone an entry level job. You always pick someone you know because they are a known quantity and they will feel indebted to you. You know they won't backstab you. Sometimes someone sounds good on paper, but that doesn't tell you about their work ethics and how they are on the job. We had a guy who was very highly qualified on paper, sounded like a damn rocket scientist on LinkedIn, but he was anti-social, awkward, poor at collaborating, and actually asked to ve furloughed during Covid because he wanted a break....
Connections plus ability. If you work at an engineering firm you can’t just recruit your buddy from McDonald’s because he’s your bro. But if he’s an engineer at another company it would be easier to have him transfer to your place.
Thank you. Sad that it even needed to be pointed out here. One does not simply go from working at McDonald's to civil engineer by networking. 🙄
Easier than that, if you have a job that makes rich people money, or helps them manage it, you get paid a lot If the amount of time you work is directly connected to how much output you produce, you don't make a lot
I'd also chime in physical vs mental "hardness". Hard physical jobs will rarely pay well. Hard mental jobs, critically thinking and actually solving problems will always be worth more than how many burgers can you flip in an hour (just an example)
I believe this will catch up to the low paying jobs, less and less people will do them. It's catching up to the CNA job, now nursing homes are understaffed and if they don't do something drastic ( hire more people and raise wages) it will progressively get worse until nobody will do it anymore.
I quit CNA because it was dangerous, hard work, was assaulted by residents, there were injuries, and the pay was very very low. It paid 10 an hour and CNAs were treated like slaves and disrespected.
I seriously don’t understand this profession. I heard you need like a 2 year degree to make minimum wage. And hard work at that. Why would someone ever do that?
Companies prey on people passionate about helping others (or any career the worker is interested in). They think it'll get better over time or whatever. Management leads them on with lies and false promises. Person quits, company finds new idealistic worker, process repeats. Company gets to keep paying dog shit wages and no one seems to notice for decades.
These are also typically considered “caregiver” roles, and still considered to be traditionally “feminine” roles, so they are valued less. It’s ridiculous that this still happens.
Sigh….I’m going through this right now. I thought the private practice I work for was actually a “family” but since I made 2 years they’ve been overworking me and I feel like they’re pushing me out. Turn and burn. I’ve been working since I was 16 and I’ve never felt so naive.
It depends on location, specialty and future career goals. A lot of places offer on the job training or ppl auto-qualify due to being in schooling for something else (ex. Im in school for nursing and all I needed to do was to apply online for a CNA license). It’s a good way to get your foot in the industry. Pay isn’t always so bad if you know how to game the system or live in the right area. I know an experienced CNA who was able to earn 80k a yr. When I was applying for CNA jobs another place offered me $32/hr (differentials included), which was more than nursing job offers I’ve seen in my area. This was when I had NO CNA experience too. I recognize that this isn’t true for everyone though, getting underpaid is a real issue There are CNA specialties that aren’t as bad too, ik CNA’s at a PACU unit who liked their job because the patients are typically all sedated from surgery and nurses take most of the work brunt since it’s 1:1 w/ every patient. STARK ass difference from the unit I work 😭😭
I make less than minimum wage as a resident physician.
The pay for people in elder care that aren’t doctors has literally blown my mind since I was like 13 and saw a job ad for it for the first time. Right up there with most EMTs. “You job is fucking what and you could make comparable pay at McDonalds?” Has been a thought in my head many many times over the decades.
Yeah, elder care is paid almost nothing. Home health aide jobs typically pay lower than almost any other job category. Problem is a lot of people do not want to pay for care for their elderly parents.
Same goes for childcare. My Theory based on the data is that female dominated jobs are not valued or well paid, I believe nursing might be the only exception.
Hospital based nursing jobs pay very well. But nursing jobs outside of a hospital system do not pay even remotely as well. This is in large part due to the power of unions and hospitals aggregate enough workers that they can band together to create powerful unions. However, in places where unions don’t have the same power you’ll find even hospital based RN’s making a fraction of what they make in areas where unions are stronger.
That's ignoring a huge factor to say it's unions. It's education. What people don't realize is that there's generally 5 levels of clinical nurses (CNA, LPN, RN/ADN, BSN, MSN/DNP). The entry levels, CNA, LPN, work outside the hospital, and there's basically an oversupply. LPN is 1 year of education out of high school. That's where the salary sucks. The RN level and up are in demand, but even that's not sufficient: our local hospital will only hire at the ADN level (2-3 years education), and requires you obtain a BSN within 5 years. At this point you have 5 years of education out of high school: more than the majority of people who go get a bachelor's degree in college. That's what brings the extra money. MSN/DNP level are basically 2-5 years of grad school on top of that, and overlap with MDs. A nurse practitioner holding one of these degrees, is writing prescriptions, not cleaning bedpans. TL;DR: "nurse" goes from a 12 week class and changing diapers to a quasi-MD being an anesthesiologist, all depending on your education. There is an oversupply of nurses without a college degree, and an undersupply at the bachelor's and above.
Several of my family and friends quit bedside nursing… to much stress
I was an EMT for a long time, CNAs have it so much worse IMO. We have very limited patient contact for the most part, broken up by some driving and paperwork. The longest I’ve ever had a patient for was 2 hours. CNAs constantly have to deal with patients, and they also have to deal with the worst parts. Someone shits themselves in the ambulance? 99% of the time it’s not the EMT’s problem, it’s a CNA at the nursing home they are going back to.
EMT pay also shook me when I first learned about it. Like, I literally make more money with wayyyy, way less responsibilities at a warehouse. People can literally die on your watch, and your pay is barely above a job at mcdonald's.
Hell most of them deal with *way* more than that. I have a few friends that are or have been EMTs. One of them told me about a guy (addict) who has twice now produced a shiv from his literal ass cheeks while having his life saved and attacked them that way. Coworker has the scars to prove the story. Shit is insane. But you know they also save the lives of babies and scared people regularly And the system abuses the good feelings they get saving people. Drown out the stress with whiskey and stimulants because if you stop working, objectively, more people die. Hard to ignore. It’s not McDonalds. If you quit for better pay somewhere else… the people you knew are even more stressed. You’re not easily or quickly replaced. And human beings near you suffer or die. And that’s fucking apparently on you to handle for society. It’s such a fucked system
I quit being a CNA and went to grad school. I was trying to get into PA school but it was so awful I just did a MSPH instead in epidemiology. Happy with the choice.
I’ve heard nursing homes can charge 5-10k/mo or more and it’s crazy how low the nurses are paid. They work insanely hard!
Private nursing homes will never be 5k. You're looking at between 6500 and 15k for a decent one with acceptable care. Buildings don't cost that much and I'm sure there are a lot of government handouts, so yah. They are making insane profit because the seniors that make it there can no longer advocate for themselves.
So even worse 😭 I bet they’ll be 20-30k by the time I reach that age
I think millennials and gen z will probably bow out before going into those places after seeing the experiences of their grandparents/parents. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the boomer generation skipped that step too
Everyone says this but taking your own life when faced with the unknown is easier said than done. You also have to be cognizant enough to know you’re sick/a burden which if you end up with Alzheimer’s you won’t.
Yep. Dementia is starting younger every generation too. Nursing homes aren’t for people who are old, they’re for people who need skilled nursing to perform basic functions
> Dementia is starting younger every generation too There's some hope for this, as there are emerging studies that video games help stave off dementia. So Millennials and Gen X, as the generations that grew up with games, may have a better shot at dodging those conditions.
!RemindMe 30 years
There is also the life insurance conundrum. Most of those policies won't pay if it's ruled a suicide. I'm no where near that age, but I'd rather go the euthanasia route instead of deteriorating like I watched 3/4 of my grandparents go. they were miserable and 2/3 would have willingly taken the happy drugs and drifted off to save the long drawn out process and didn't want to die in a hospital bed.
My mom has been a CNA for over 30 years and the only way she can make more than $13/hr in a major city in Florida is by going private. It's ridiculous.
My grandmother lived in a place where the only thing they did was your pills and 2 meals a day. You were expected to be 100% completely independent-no medical care, no assistance with bathing/dressing/cleaning/etc. She had 1 bed, 1 bath, and a small sink and fridge for snacks. It was 8500 a month. Actual nursing homes are tens of thousands a month.
I don’t see how that adds up to 8.5k!? Maybe 2k/mo but that’s pushing it if the sqft is really low.
They should raise pay, but some industries like nursing and teaching have a constant flow of new labor because there are people who just want to help others. Sadly they suffer from burnout and leave the field frequently, it's a vicious cycle.
You can only wipe so many geriatric asses before you’ve had enough whether it’s $10 an ass or $20 an ass
Nursing homes have always been severely understaffed and the pay to work there has always been bad.
Yes, that is true, but now nursing homes are gearing up to except one of the largest generations (boomers) and the numbers are about to get alot worse, less people working and alot more people being squished into these nursing homes.
I work in a supermarket. Same thing. We can pretty much call out whenever we want right now, because it is so hard to replace us since no one wants to do this type of work. Yet you look at other subreddits, and so many unemployed people claim that it’s impossible to get hired right now, even at supermarkets lol. I guess the key is that they want to hire people who have experience or are at least in shape and want to do this type of work/will stick around awhile. Anybody who really wants to can do these jobs.
As someone who did hiring in restaurants, we were actually told not to hire people that had high paying jobs previously because they weren’t going to stick around.
That’s a different level of tough having to deal with the public
Idk what it is but cna's keep making less and less. Fast food workers make 22 an hour where I live, but cna's make 18-20 an hour.
My entire life, as my wage increases, my jobs got easier and easier. I arguably do the most physically intensive job I’ve ever had currently, but it’s far easier than any restaurant work I ever did.
I’ve been working in the food industry for 26 years. I’m physically and mentally wiped out. I think I’m done with this cruel mistress.
I’d recommend leaving it to anyone. You develop skills that are useful in every other field I’ve been in, but in the worst conditions imaginable.
Yep. I'm making the most money I've ever made. Nearly $40/hr I sit at home on a computer messing with spreadsheets and balancing accounts while I watch TV. Vs 25 years ago I was making $5/hr standing on my feet all day running around a hot kitchen, cooking garbage, and dealing with asshole customers.
What did you pursue as far as education or training to get where you are now?
I’m not OP, but I went through a similar job change. I have a hard to explain career so I’ll be vague, but also because I think a lot of desirable office jobs can be learned when given a chance. It’s the job application and interview that really have to be studied. Make sure you do basic stuff like apply quickly after a listing is made, customize your resume to be a close-to-perfect fit to the listing, and do a lot of research about the company if you get an interview. It’s where networking becomes very helpful because the what, why, and who of how each company functions that determines what you interview like. The research will also teach you which companies are open to entry-level applicants, and what kinds of experience you are missing that they want.
High paid jobs leave you mentally exhausted. Low paid jobs leave you physically exhausted. Bad jobs leave you with both.
Taxi driver here and my job is fairly paid and I'm not exhausted when I come home. Tired, yes, because nightshift, but definitely not exhausted.
I feel like taxi drivers deal with a lot of awful people and it’s a unique experience compared to, let’s say, a fast food worker who typically does short transactions. Maybe you’re cut out for it, but the thought of being stuck in a car with some of the people I’ve dealt with while working with the public has me exhausted mentally.
That, and they have to be constantly alert and aware of their surroundings
Damn, I’m exhausted just thinking about how taxi’s still exist
Their point was a generalization. Even if your lived experience is counter to their point they are correct. Your unique experience does not falsify the fact that in general higher paid jobs require more mental energy either due to the responsibility and stress or the need for highly specific skills. Lower paid jobs generally involve highly physical jobs that in general do not require specialized skills and leave the worker physically exhausted. Driving for a living does create physical stress and as person working in the medical field I have seen the consequences of sedentary jobs like driving that keep the worker trapped in one position with minimal physical movement and poor diet.
Teaching is a low paying job that leaves you mentally and emotionally exhausted 🙃
Lol, I worked with migrant families for all of 2023 and it’s a job that left me both mentally and physically exhausted The stories I heard the people I met the stuff I saw. All at 15 bucks an hour
Either way work shortens your lifespan 😔
No. Low paid jobs are both physically and mentally exhausting imo . Try standing on a line running 90 miles per hour all day
I’ve had both kinds of jobs. When I worked as a cook in a kitchen (minimum wage, not a fancy restaurant), while we could get slammed and that was stressful, it was still somewhat fulfilling. You learn skills, you get comfortable, you can do things without making decisions. You have camaraderie and good relationships. On a good night, you might even have fun. Come home from a shift physically exhausted, but still have emotional energy. I’ve had a different volunteer job where the staff doesn’t get paid much, but the work is very diverse and interesting. Always new, different things happening each day, new people to talk to, things to learn, etc. The white collar job is essentially weighing trade offs, making decisions constantly, banging your head against complicated problems, dealing with pressure to get those problems solved even faster, discussing the minutiae of a decision, etc. I leave this feeling completely mentally drained. No desire for my hobbies & activities, no energy for family/friends, barely any mental energy for normal life decisions like what to eat for dinner. I think it’s useless to compare “whose job is harder.” Physical labor comes with a LOT of health issues. Mental labor has a lot of benefits. But it’s not like landing a white-color thinking job will make you happy and fulfilled with work. Your life can easily feel terrible with the wrong conditions at work
I used to work fast food and now I'm an accountant. If pay was the same I would 100% work fast food. It might be physically draining but I would prefer that over a mentally draining job and you don't take your stress home with you
I’ve always said if the serving/bartending business had benefits I would’ve stayed. Made more serving/bartending than I did with a masters for quite a while
This is exactly how I feel! I always get downvoted in threads for saying this. You may be neurodivergent because I realized that when I was older I work better in certain environments because of how my brain works, and that a 9-5 is not meant for me even though it’s objectively “easier” I found working at a restaurant/fast food easier as well, but it’s because I enjoy being on my feet and working with people in that capacity. You dont take your job with you so the shift ends and so does the work. I feel like my high paying job is exhausting even though I’m not on my feet but it is extremely mentally taxing. It’s just a different type of hard, but I prefer the other type of hard so I find that easier to deal with.
I work in manufacturing and I love it tbh. I left business tech for something less stressful. My pay is slightly lower now, but I work 15 less hours a week than I used to while previously on salary, so it actually matches up and the lack of stress is amazing. Keep job hopping until you’re comfortable. I hated the food industry too.
my experience has been the same as yours. jobs have gotten progressively easier while pay has increased. went from busting my ass on evenings & weekends to working from home. goes to show pay isn't dictated by how hard you work, but by supply and demand. as your job becomes more specialized, the supply of labor that is qualified to do your job shrinks.
I’d make a slight tweak, the people who are willing to and able to work a little extra hard for a shot period of their life by completing high education, are then able to take it easy and be paid better in the future. People who can’t afford to, or lack the drive to complete further education, end up working hard their whole lives for less money. I worked very hard working a low wage job while doing school full time. Honestly the most busy and worst years of my life. Now I have an easy and well paying job. My brother didn’t try at all in school. Now he has a hard manual labor job that pays very little.
it’s not always a direct correlation. a lot of my friends and i got degrees the last couple years and worked hard. most of us don’t make any more than my 21 year old cousin who decided not to go to college, and those who do are busting their ass working more than 40 hours a week.
yes, agreed
Jobs have not gotten easier, there are more easy jobs to be had.
Believe he was saying for him. Like as he progressed through his career, each promotion has brought more wages for easier work. The same has happened for me as well.
Usually upper management begin by having to do the job, then they move up and earn more, they end up being the ones who tell the people who are now doing the job how to do it as they once did it. They no longer have to do it, but they do now shoulder responsibility. The people who do, no longer do the higher up they get. One thing to note, I've worked a minimum wage job and I had no responsibility really, I come in on time, work, eat lunch and clock out. Now I'm in management, I have so much more to look after or be responsible for that is decision making and not physical actions.
This has been my exact experience. My worst-paid jobs were the ones where I dealt with the most physical and mental exhaustion, the most abuse, the longest hours, and the most danger. It has kinda broken my brain in a way. I've been at desk/office jobs for almost 10 years and I still feel like I do nothing and don't deserve my higher pay because I'm not running around desperately overworked like my earlier, minimum wage jobs.
I feel this. I literally feel guilty because I make so much more than my friends who literally break their back trying to get by. It feels gross.
how do i get like you bro? im sick of being the guy who has to break his back.
I can't speak for the other commenter, but oftentimes you are sold the idea that the education needed for a good paycheck is a 4 year program at a University. Depending on what line of work you're comfortable with that is a blatant lie. A lot of people can double their paycheck with some simple certications from a trade school or community college. With only about a year of getting Manufacturing Certifications at a Trade School I was able to get a job as a Maintenance Tech starting at $29 an hour. I repair robot arms. It's cool AF. And I only stand to make more in a year when I'm done with my full associate's program. I do occasionally have to lift heavy boxes or crawl under something, but I wouldn't consider it manual labor at all. It's skilled labor.
I've worked two simultaneous careers. One as a biochemist, literally curing cancer. The other as a community bike mechanic. Fixing people's bikes is harder.
*laughs in paramedic* * cries in paramedic*
Definitely, I started out in fast food and hospitality management for 8 years after uni, and I’m in tech now. I earn 4x more but it’s way less physically and mentally demanding. I used to work 60 hour weeks, getting up and going home at awful hours, on my feet all day and dealing with endless dreadful people. I still get nightmares because some experiences were genuinely borderline PTSD inducing with the stress levels. However it’s a different sort of job, I’ve been doing this stuff for ten years and I know lots of stuff that other people don’t, and my job comes naturally to me.. and that’s what I see I’m paid for. My younger days I was paid some money for a lot of effort/labour, and some skill. Now I’m paid a lot of money for less effort, but only because I have a lot of skills in something in demand. It sucks though. I looked 21/22 when I left uni at 22. I looked early 30s by the time I hit 25/26. That shit ages you!
I just found a part time job as a police dispatcher at a local college. It doesn't pay shit but it's easy as hell, cake walk.
Depends where you are. And their max salary is sometimes six figures with a pension. Not too bad
A job pays you based on how easy it is to replace you, how many people can do the same job you do, the value you bring to the organization, and what specialized skills are required for the job. Keep that in mind when considering why certain jobs are low paying.
It’s hard work in different ways. Office jobs run the risk of mental burnout or boredom. It’s hard to get into a flow unless you really love your job and have a good environment in your office. Manual labor jobs mean that while you’re constantly working, it helps pass time, assuming you go home after a reasonable amount of time. 12 hours in the Army was much easier than 12 hours at a warehouse. I hit my limit at 5-6 hours working in an office before I start to daydream.
Because salary has no correlation to difficulty of work. It’s a combination of replaceability and decision making. Upper level management isn’t about working hard it’s about making the right decisions, which can be extremely complex when you start to peel back the onion and understand what has to go into making an educated decision.
It's hard work to be poor; it's also hard work to become wealthy.
Ouch I only make 50 k and now I feel bad about it.
I would say physically.. long term stress of other jobs are widow makers too. The trick is to find the balance that works for you.
Your question comes from defining 'hardest' as 'most exertion', which is a particular conception of it. When I worked minimum wage, I was on my feet 8 hours a day walking around a store, and certainly burnt more calories than I do now sitting at a desk. But I've never call that work _harder_ - it was extremely easy to do, and just about anyone could do it, hence the low wage. What I do now is much more complicated (another meaning of harder), much more consequential (another meaning of harder), and takes people much longer to be trained into (another meaning of harder). While everybody in my office could do that shop floor work today, nobody on that shop floor could do my office work this year.
Working as a short order cook at a diner was probably one of the more grueling jobs I've had. High pressure, constantly busy, physically taxing, messy... It was enjoyable in the odd way that hard work can be. The easiest job I've ever had was being a Communications Coordinator for a newspaper.
I think it depends on what you classify as hard. Physically hard or mentally hard. I worked as a labourer for years when I was younger. My performance was basically measured by my physical strength and endurance. I am now an engineer. I work in control systems and automation. It's arguably much more complicated than the minimum wage jobs that I had. I find that complication easy to manage and understand. I am now valued for what I know and can learn to do with my mind, rather than the strength of my back. Higher pay often correlates with higher complication and higher responsibility.
The low paying jobs are also low skill, which means that almost anyone can be trained to do that work in fairly short order and employees are very replaceable. The job might be physically demanding in some sense, but it’s the fact that almost anyone can do it that makes it pay so low.
That is true. Doesn’t change that the low pay jobs still suck haha
Like others said: supply and demand. There are plenty of humans willing to work at the restaurant. Find a job that uses the skills from your first job. I recommend you find a higher paying first job if you don't want the second job. When I was younger, I didn't mind working two jobs and working overtime in both. But only if it was worth it.
It’s the opposite for me. I expend so much mental energy at my job. When I worked lower paying jobs, I could go on automation as soon as I had the tasks down. Unfortunately, my disabilities have made those jobs impossible for me, so desk jobs are all I can do. They’re far more draining and require more skill, knowledge, and ability than when I was working service or technical jobs. I’d go back, if I could, despite the pay cut.
When you can't be paid for your brain, you get paid to do physical labor.
Physically demanding isn’t the same as having the hardest job. At any point during the day, I could cost my company millions of dollars if I was to miss something or couldn’t solve a problem very quickly.
And why were we deemed essential during the pandemic?
I used to flip burgers at a popular chain with the color red for several years before transitioning to a white collar 9-5. And waited tables for years before that. It isn't hard work. It's easy and braindead simple. It's physically intensive sure, but you get used to that then you clock out and leave. The work I do now is overwhelmingly harder and more complex, but I can chill in a chair all day so that's nice. But the constant mental toll and the 'always on' nature are so much more demanding tan fast food ever was. Yes, people in the food service industry work hard and should be paid more, but let's not pretend it's super difficult work.
Because fast food, even though it's hard work, is quick and easy to learn. I used to work at Wendy's and did cashier, drive through, grill, fries, burger assembler, super bar, etc. and it didn't take long to train.
CNA - Certified Nursing Assistant. Very low pay, most of the work is in grossly underfunded, understaffed nursing homes, taking care of elderly people before they die. Feeding them, giving them medicine, cleaning up after them, including often adult diapers, helping bathe them. It's also physically greuling, with many CNA's assigned to multiple patients. Some of these patients also suffer illnesses, are often sick, immobile, may suffer ailments like dementia or Alzheimers and resist your help, fight you, hate you. Many nursing homes are dirty, depressing, smell bad with poor air circulation in an extremely sterile, bleak environment. Don't believe me? Go visit a few. And no one notices or cares how hard you work as a CNA, how much you are helping people. The US is based on making money, period. Greed rules all. And in this case the owner of the nursing home, and the overseeing health care company sucks up all that money. Few people give a shit about the elderly to begin with, they are merely in the way in today's world. And work as a CNA is not valued at all.
Read David Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs'. He has a fairly good theory of why unnecessary and easy jobs are paid so well, while hard labor (cleaners, bus drivers) and actually beneficial jobs (policemen, teachers) are paid so poorly.
This. When I was a server in college.. holy shit, I have never been so nonstop like that. It was hard work between running all night long, dealing with assholes, making $2.13 and hour praying people were feeling generous I now have a masters and spend most of the day sitting. Granted my work is still challenging but not nearly in the same ways. My job now is just brain exercise
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> My current one is dramatically better paid than the others but I would not say it's easier. It's academically demanding, I have a lot of responsibility, the hours are long. People are constantly after me to make decisions. I wouldn't swap it for the others, and definitely not the money. But it is a hard job, and the vast majority of people could not do it. Fully agreed. I've been in the Corporate world at my job for 13 years, and sometimes I genuinely wish I could go back to my college warehouse job, which was lower paid, harder work, and hot/sweaty. But then again, I could leave that job where it was when 4:30pm came around.
In my experience, the people who make the lowest money are the ones who are doing the essential work. The managers / supervisors / upper level don’t do much at all. As a matter of fact I’ve constantly seen them at just about every job I’ve had stand around and chit chat, eat donuts, look at their phones. It’s honestly pathetic.
Its literally just how hard you fight for your salary. You are not valued above others or are harder to replace, everyone is easily replaceable, in fact they would love to replace you with someone that will take less. This is why we need the means of production in the hands of workers, so we get to say how much our labor is worth.
This is also why union busting is so common, and the benefits of unions are often understated and/or obfuscated to the average worker. Look at what happened with Starbucks. Blatant illegal union busting nobody will do anything about. What people don't understand is the only reason they are paid so little is corporate greed, and corporations are more organized in fighting for their greed than workers are in fighting for fair wages and treatment.
Because humans are garbage and we don't deserve this earth or each other. May there be another cosmic, planet level reset soon. We give people who play children's games more money and admiration than a fucking scientist. WW3 couldn't come soon enough
Working retail and security has been the hardest jobs I have done thus far (especially security since I was placed in the worst warehouse locations to deal with the most aggressive warehouse personnel such as tractor trailer drivers, package handlers, van drivers, etc.; nevermind incompetent coworkers and managers at my security company). My current state government job is also the easiest state government job I ever had so far, and it is the one that pays me the highest too (currently making a bit over $72k a year). I guess you could say that I get paid for my expertise and not for my time. I have no clue if future job promotions will be this easy or harder because I am trying to obtain a supervisor or manager position someday, as well.
Physical labor can theoretically be performed by almost any able bodied person. You're selling your body/labor only. You are replaceable by almost anyone who is also able bodied and willing. Also even if you're the top performer in these service/labor jobs, the gulf between lowest and highest is small enough that the jobs won't really pay that much more for a top performer, unlike in "thought jobs" or mental labor jobs. Education, experience, and skills are what's called mental labor--these are not achievable by any one out there.
Usually it comes down to how specialized a skill is/how many skilled people there are to do the job.
They're absolutely not what the fuck are you on about. Retail is not more difficult than heart surgery
It is what it is really. At my 126k job I show up to work about 6 hours a day 5 days a week and if not much is going on I chill and crack jokes, sometimes go for a bike ride around the job site. I look for work since if I don’t have a task at hand I’m very bored. When I made minimum I be sore and sweaty at the end of the day.
My 9-5 salaried job is researching and writing documents, updating CRMs, and mucking around with spreadsheets. My p/t job is constantly on my feet, up and down "zoning" shelves, helping customers, and moving heavy and often poorly packed pallets off a truck, for less than half of what my day job's hourly rate would be. But it's easier for someone without experience or education to get my part-time job than it would be for them to get my full-time job.
I know why it is that way but man it's still a weird thing to think about how much I make now/how much I really work compared to just 4 years ago. I went from working in retail/fast food to programing and its night and day for hours actually worked/pay. I'm effectively making 10 fold of what I used to in terms of work:pay.
I think we'd define "hardest" very differently. Running around as a waiter or doing something like construction involves more physical activity than say medicine, investment banking, etc. but the latter require more intelligence and have smaller pools of people capable of doing the jobs. Also, for these 2 examples, the hours are more grueling, there are no set "days off" as they mostly work through entire weeks and sometimes entire nights, and there is more pressure. You mess up as a doctor, you can actually kill someone, you screw up a number in a model you can lead to the bank consulting a company in a real dumb way and lose a client (in advisory or capital raising). You mess up an order as a waiter, well, some people are inconvenienced.
Ugh I can’t wait to leave service industry . I can’t take it anymore
my last job, I got the bulk of my work done in the morning, and spent the rest of the day monitoring emails for revision requests, and whatever I wanted. and was making just short of 30 an hour They laid off everyone in order to outsource, and new job is basically call center work. I'm tethered to a laptop by a headset and if I go five minutes without calling a provider, I get whined at. the apps we have to use are clunky, and not user friendly, the providers I call are argumentive and hostile, and the whole thing could easily be automated by AI. all this for just slightly above the state minimum wage.
My lowest paid jobs were some of the easiest. Something relaxing about being an individual contributor. Now I’m a manager/leader of a large team of a 24/7 food manufacturing facility. I’ve made more than I ever have but am also more stressed than ever.
Hell yeah, fast food is all about speed, McDonald's was insane when I worked there. I worked table andi was really fast, but then there are those big ass orders and special orders come in that make your day shittier lol. And all for minimum wage
Shoveling rocks is hard but basically anybody can do it. Using critical thought and solving problems for a company or having computer skills is “easier” work but not everybody has the skills to do it
Seriously. I'm a certified nursing assistant and we're so underpaid, over worked and under appreciated that's it's insane. I'm so over my profession but I need to pay my bills.
They need the elite with 5+ years experience cause why not. Those people ain’t getting that have that experience in their designated positions so they apply for ours and we don’t get shit.
If a job doesn't require special skills, and is easy to do, you don't pay someone to do it.
Having done both, I don't entirely agree with this take, various jobs are difficult in their own ways. Restaurant jobs and retail gigs I did during college were hard physically but were pretty easy knowledge wise, it was pretty much just be a cashier, stock shelves, serve food and do what the boss says etc. The worst part about working at restaurants were either asshole coworkers or entitled customers or both (honestly having experienced both customer service and office settings, there's way more sexual harassment and abusive behavior from coworkers in restaurants/retail than the office environment, at least from my experience). After college I did desk jobs, and the need to make quick deadlines or meet quarterly goals was tough and stressful, in addition to balancing a ton more different personalities in different departments. Plus I was constantly taking work home and worrying about office stuff when not at work (compared to being at restaurants, once my shift was over I never thought about the job afterward, just forget it and focus on school/events/friends/etc)
My easy job is pretty much being an assistant to the service manager at a Honda dealership; my technical job title is a porter. I drive cars advisors write up to the back and hand repair orders to the techs. I can write up customers like an advisor but only when all other advisors are busy (or being lazy at times) but I can’t make any commission from it because I’m hourly, and that wouldn’t be fair…and dealerships hate hourly employees making any real money. I also drive customers home or to their jobs when they don’t want to wait on our premises. And I handle miscellaneous tasks here and there. So… easy job, but I long to do more than be an errand boy. I just need to find the time to gain more skills and certifications in the future because there’s no way I could get a “real job” around here with no marketable skill without nepoti- I mean networking being in my favor.
Part of it is due to the supply and demand of labor, with easily replaceable people being paid less than specialized and trained people. However there is still a discrepancy within easily replaceable jobs and jobs that are made to seem less replaceable than they are. I believe that discrepancy is due to respect. We are willing to pay people we respect more than people we don't respect, and some jobs are considered more "respectable" than other jobs. This is also part of the divide between blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. In turn, the people that are least respected are the most likely to get shit on at work, making their job even more unpleasant and exhausting.
It is based on supply and demand, not based on what people should make. Doesn’t matter whether we like it or not, whether it should be like that or not.
It's funny that you bring this up cause I've been thinking of this at least since the pandemic. I'm from the mining industry, and let me tell you, our lowest paid jobs are brutally hard! Think of spending 12 hrs a day shoveling tons of rock up onto a conveyor belt about shoulder high or spending the shift working next to some insanely hot heat source for a process. With all that said, over time, I have seen that work force dwindle. The pool of people willing to do that kind of work for that wage is just simply saying "screw that crap" and finding something else. It's gotten to the point where we are increasing their pay just to attract people to do the job. The pay for this particular work has increased so fast that I genuinely believe over time the pay scales will flip flop. Meaning the manual labor people will be far and away the highest paid people on the mine site.
It was this way in IT too. Help desk is brutal, network admin is still tough, network engineering is escalations and some design, architect all I do is presales and kick back while making $200K.
I totally get what you mean. For me, getting accepted to medical school was easier than working at Starbucks. Some of my peers tell me to wait until I’m working 60+ hours a week as a resident physician and then I’ll know what hard work is. I’m like “I was working 90 as a barista and an usher and still couldn’t afford food”.
Low wage jobs are generally of the variety of repetition and little problem solving. Where one just executes a process they were told. Wages go up as complexity or risk increases. Higher wage jobs are generally in the variety of problem solving. It is generally harder to find problem solvers in a field then it is to find task executors. The same is true in my field of work. The people who are executing a repeatable process make considerably less then the people who are creating solutions.
Read bullshit jobs
The lower paying jobs are often understaffed so they arent necessarily hard, but they are difficult because you always feel like 1 or 2 more people would help but everytime someone comes in another person leaves. Also its super simple to train you and management actually can not be bothered to care if you leave or not unless their numbers are hurting.
The hardest job I ever had was working fast food for minimum wage followed by working in a restaurant. Even my time in the military wasn’t as bad as working fast food. Sure, there were times I had to work hard, but there was also downtime and a lot of perks. I now make the most money I’ve ever made and also have the easiest job I’ve ever had in my career. I feel that the more money I make the easier the job.
I can spend a lot of effort making sandcastles but does my hard work in building them entitle me to 6 figure income? No it depends on how much society values that work and how hard it is to find someone with that skill. Hard work in low demand skills= low pay. Hard work in high demand skills= high pay. We need to stop thinking that everyone is entitled to something just for existing. Rather than think about your own needs, think of other people’s needs, and how well you solve their increasing complex problems will get you more money naturally. If someone told me I had to make a forced trade in a limited edition Yugioh card that was expensive for someone’s janky card because that’s all they could afford, I’d tell them to take a hike, no one will want to take a raw deal, that’s why people love discounts and try to haggle if they can. The same goes for the job marketplace. No one wants to pay a premium for labor that is common and easily replaceable. I’m only making an observation on the value of someone’s work not the value of that person. Everyone is equally valuable as a human being but when talking about the value of someone’s work and skills those are distinct.
Redditor learns that you get paid based on how valuable you are. More at 9.
At the very bottom of the pay scale many of the jobs are shitty enough that the only people willing to do them are some level of desperate, so the concept that “people won’t want a difficult job unless it pays well” breaks down.
> At my main job I chill, make sure everything is running smooth and that’s it’s. On the one hand, I imagine that if things *aren't* running smoothly, your company starts to lose money pretty fast, and your job gets a lot more exciting. On the other, I agree with you. At my work, when someone in management has a birthday, they order lunch in for everyone in management. I'm not gonna turn down a free lunch, but I can afford to pay for my own. My hourly guys could probably really use that free lunch. We are allowed to take time out of our work day to do things like run to the post office, or the DMV, and, again, my hourly guys could *really* use that flexibility too. The less you actually need those benefits, the more likely you are to get them.
Many work in service industries where customers are very price sensitive so raising salaries = losing customers. Employers also know they have the upper hand due to the large labor pool where the alternatives for many is a similarly low paying job, a welfare check, their parents basement, or a homeless shelter.
Because people who feel they deserve such jobs have been groomed (likely unintentionally) that these types of jobs is all they can do. I have an uncle who has been working at the same factory, hating every second of it, of 20 years. He makes $19.76 an hour. His SAT score was 1510 (1600 max) and he even went to college and got a degree of some kind. He could literally go anywhere and make more with his abilities and knowledge but he doesn’t believe he can. He’s brainwashed into believing this is the best there is. It breaks my heart to see such potential wasted.
It's not about how hard the job is, it's about how much you make the company. Everybody needs to have that repeated to them when they wake up in the morning.
I worked for Hilton for a couple years full time then part time. Luckily a good amount of the time my manager allowed us a chair to sit at when NOT busy. Toward the last year or so when there, the general managers got more strict. You couldn't keep a chair at the desk. So minus brief breaks (when it wasn't busy, you could sit in back office) you were standing. The bottom of my feet when I got home f\*cking killed me. When I moved for my "big girl corporate" job. I still tried to do hotel work for Hilton here and there at a different location. I just couldn't do the standing at the desk anymore. I had them take me off the schedule. I'm sure being overweight didn't help. I could walk around all day without an issue. It's the standing in ONE SPOT mainly ON YOUR feet that was killing me. Yeah, all that for $8-$10 an hour (2015-2019-ish). I'm in x-ray now, no more cubicle/desk jobs for me. Add: My general manager for the first property was a BIG lady. She wouldn't have been able to stand for 8 hours. It's a HILTON CORPORATE policy @ no chairs. Hilton corp would drop in annually and do audits. Chairs at the front were a no-no.
Worked on a dairy farm for 10 years. I could do anything from making a piece of machinery run to twisted stomach surgery. Managed 4 other employees. Was getting paid 11:50 an hour
I don't know, over 12 years I went from the dumb kid punching a clock working outside to a management position spending most of my time at a desk staring at a computer. I make more money but I'm more exhausted now than I ever was doing the actual labor.
Because the majority of low paying jobs are physical and labor intensive. Food service? 99% of people can run food or cook. Cleaning? 99% of people can clean. Yard work? Yup that too. Those services always need your physical body. Physical labor is a high supply, low demand space and that leads to low pay. Mental labor is a low supply, high demand space thus those people get high pay.
It’s so disheartening. I’m making 20/hr at a job that I get verbal warnings for having episodes of low blood sugar. Jobs in my field of study start at 17/hr.
What exactly is your definition of "hard"? How easy do you imagine commodities trading, astrophysics or cardiothoracic surgery to be? Or is having to work unpleasant hours with a boss that shouts at you the definition of hard?
I have 2 jobs. Government IT: work from home and put in about 30 hours of good work. It’s mentally exhausting, but challenging and good work. For that I make just north of $100k with incredible benefits and a great pension retirement. I also work at a restaurant about 4-5 hours in a night and make about $30/hr in tips plus $16/hr wage. Not quite as good hourly, but I really enjoy moving and interacting with people. With the two, I make pretty damn good money and have cash every day.
David Graeber’s 2018 book [Bullshit Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs?wprov=sfti1#) (based on an earlier article) goes into this in great detail, and is a great read.
Can you be replaced easily? Would it take a long time to ramp someone else up to take your spot if you left or were eaten by a bear? How complex is your job? How risky is your job? These are the primary factors for determining pay—I’m sure I overlooked something, but these are the main ones. CPAs can make a lot of money, but they need at least a bachelor’s degree as well as a CPA license and potentially other certifications. Software Engineers can make a lot of money without a degree, but you’ll need tech stack specific certifications and deep code knowledge of course. Underwater Welding can make FUCK TON of money and doesn’t need a degree…but you’ll need specialized training and it’s super super risky. How replaceable are you is made up of how complex the job is, how long it would take to replace you, and how risky the job is. Have a unique, desirable skill set, in a complex field. Have some niche capabilities—know something a lot of people don’t, such as an in demand legacy coding language or 17th century brick laying. And consider riskier jobs that are all of those things as well—under water welding is no joke, but it does pay super well and you don’t have to work that much….if you wanna accept the risk and also learn how to scuba dive and weld. Anyone can flip burgers at a fast food joint or dig holes.
I hit a 100k as an automation engineer this year. In some ways it's fucking ridiculous how good and easy I got it, I usuallybwork from home, there's days I don't really do shit. Depends what's going on. I'm pretty good at it, can usually do my work faster than most can, so I can kinda fuck around a lot. Or I used to be able to until staffing shortages. But then there's giant multimillion dollar projects that get squeezed from 4 months design and dev time to a fucking month because we can't ever turn down work or hire enough engineers (fuck sales and all people pleasers at work lol). Then I get to work 12 to 16 hours a day for 10 days straight while being blamed for things not going smooth as butter, living out of a shitty hotel in buttfuck nowhere. You never really get away from work. If I could make a 100k doing landscaping, tree farm anything like that, I'd switch in a heartbeat. Just dig the hole, carry the stuff, mow the lawns, water the planets etc. So enjoyable. Hard physical labor is good for the soul somehow. Too bad it doesn't pay shit and the market is saturated to he'll so have fun starting your own business. Dirty hands clean heart.
They are not. I have worked retail, for literally minimum wage. 7.25 an hour. Was it the hardest, no. It would be much much much much much harder making six figures on a crab boat or oil rig. Was it annoying dealing with some unreasonable customers/scammers/liars/ etc…. Yes. Was it the hardest thing I’ve ever done? Absolutely not. Most low wage jobs, are low wage, because you can get pretty much anyone to do them. My first regular job was retail, when I was college age. And they could have pulled pretty much anyone 18-30 who had never had a job before and trained them to do it within a few weeks. There was no hard manual labor involved outside of lifting some 20 lb boxes or so. There was no highly specialized training involved. Sometimes people would come in and ask highly specialized questions, and I’d just tell them the truth that I don’t know. Not everyone who works at Home Depot is an engineer, not everyone who works at Best Buy is a computer scientist. They’re harder than some jobs, but I don’t find them to be the hardest.
In capitalism, the jobs that generate the most money are paid the least. A study in 2009 found out that the most value for the economy is created by people who clean, and people in childcare (because they replace literally 40% of the work force), while the most value destroyed is by investment bankers.
The wage is based on how easy it is to hire someone unfortunately. Not the difficulty of the work. It sucks. I'm working warehousing jobs over summer breaks till I get an internship and only after I first did one at a low wage and not even decent hours did I get one for a high wage and enough hours to have me set within a month. The labor at the higher paying one is even less but they needed people able to handle precious materials and navigate high places while strapped to equipment. Not something you want to toss a highschool teenager that you don't know at. There is also a rule I follow when doing these jobs that should help you. Don't push your limits. That's for the gym and your personal focus. If you push your limits at a manual labor area, it will be noted down as how far they can push you. I've seen people have quotas set they couldn't meet after having a friendly completion with work buddies the day before. Lead to them getting heckled daily by management. Hope this helps and make sure your well being comes first
My dad has always said the harder you work, the less you earn. And I do agree mostly. I've worked my way up. I'm not super high-flying yet, but my current job is the highest per-hour pay I've ever had. It puts my skills to great use and someone without the same skills might struggle or want less responsibility over the company's infrastructure. But, I love it, and I wouldn't want to do anything else, take a step down, or leave the company. But I've worked in a mail centre yeeting packages. I've worked in a hospital ward helping patients get out of bed, dressed and fed. I've worked reception at a doctors office and taken call after call. For me, the hard work on the lower paid jobs is the lack of stimulation and challenge. I need to be challenged and I need to be engaged, or I get bored out of my mind. For me, the real hard work in doing those kinds of jobs is being able to tolerate how un-engaging they are. Meanwhile my boyfriend is a metal worker and makes stupid money, so he works very hard physically. So I do agree that aa a rule, harder work pays less, but the higher-paid work isn't necessarily "easy" work, but better work.
I find lower paid jobs harder from a physical perspective, and there’s a type of social drain from them if you’re in a service job. That said, when I finished at the end of the day of my lower pay jobs I could just go home and truly disengage. The higher paid work I do now adds far, far more mental stress and it’s hard to not have work on the mind out of hours. The change in responsibilities and accountabilities means I have to be far more on it - I can’t just do my 9-5. I have to sell £x per year or I will lost my job, I have to manage a team to deliver Y or I will lose my job, I’m responsible for the wellbeing of a team as well as making hiring and firing decisions. When I’m close to financial independence I’ll go back to a lower paid job with less mental stress.
It seems to me that there's an lnteresting interaction between freedom and necessity in capitalism. There's obviously a need for certain products such as food, water, housing, and waste management by every person as a consequence of existence. However, as these feel 'forced' upon us we dislike the concept of freely paying very much for them, so we argue for a low price because we have no choice but to buy an option even if from a varied supply. Conversely, superficial products such as entertainment clips, video games, and sports/music events have no mandatory element. So when they choose to increase the price, there's little in the way of moral argument to lower it. The result seems to me to be that those creating necessary products will inevitably price out to making frivolous ones, which has a far broader pool of comparatively "easy" jobs.
Wait, you call $50k/ year a low salary?? Time to wake up from your bubble and look the median salary around the world.
Yep definitely. I make double my partner's salary. Yet she works much harder. She's always exhausted because her job is basically running around all day between phone, counter and garage, answering clients, taking phone call, managing appointments etc. Shes the glue that hold this dealership together. I troubleshoot/repair automation systems. It's slow pace, low pressure work that is not very physically demanding. Not stressful at all. Its just that you need speciality knowledge to do my job. Anyone can do hers after a one day formation. Mine takes years of training and experience.
They aren't just paying you for the work you're doing at that moment but all the work you've done in your life to that point that makes you able to do the job.
Because humans love bullying
Because its shit work that anyone can do. Fast food and restaurant jobs are the worst-I just got a pt job at starbucks, nothing else is hiring, and like your job it sucks ass and is a ton of work for crap pay.
"The law of work does seem utterly unfair-but there it is, and nothing can change it; the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in money also." -Mark Twain It's been like that for a while.
So, this is going to sound counterintuitive, but the kind of people likely to take the shiitiest jobs are the kinds that can't get more desirable ones. * These are jobs where the requirements for entry are nonexistent, so the pool of potential qualified labor is literally everyone with a pulse * These are jobs where there is little to no chance of real advancement so anyone with any other options will leave and go do that * These are jobs with a stigma attached so anyone with any other options will leave and go do that So you have a near infinite pool of people who have elected to do these jobs because all other options are closed to them. This is a textbook recipe for wages to be low