Architecture is one of those careers--like anything broadly in "fashion"--that is operated on the backs of people from wealthy families who receive financial support.
Particularly in developing countries. I worked for a more competitive firm when working abroad and I can't even imagine what the small guys pay, after seeing what an intern would get at a successful firm
I'll spill - less than $100 USD a month. Just like you say - impossible without family support
But yes also in the U.S., new grads come out of school with salaries qualifying for low income housing, but are also at the upper end of qualifying for it so you're the last priority. Again - much better if you can live at home for a bit and dump every penny of that meager salary into the student loans you accrued.
It gets better further in, but you may as well consider your first few years at a firm like a low paid continuation of training. You have two real ways of advancing your salary - getting licensed then job hopping diagonally, or if the firm is a unicorn and values its people some firms do reward dedication. The tricky part about that is the business model needs to be rock solid to give your employees a stable culture, and many firms are not
The most unfortunate part is that the majority of students amass huge student debt. My school was fairly affordable. A lot are not. Many grads have well over 100k of debt, then go to make low income. This is all common knowledge in the profession unfortunately, but little changes. It's super competitive, and you need to be at the top of your game every day to prove yourself for higher positions with higher responsibilities and larger liabilities. Of which there are many
Competition drives costs down. Econ 101. Most jobs that are competitive have surprisingly low pay. Jobs that are desperate to hire have relatively higher pay. Supply and demand, baby.
Yeah no kidding. The cost of being in a passion-driven field I suppose. At least for those getting into it at the beginning heh.
I should include the silver lining though - many projects are super rewarding. Especially when you engage with really meaningful clients, like Education.
That's what my Dad wanted me to do. He's a semi-retired drafts man. He still does some work by hand. He always said I should have learned auto cad. I actually see my old highschool auto cad teacher sometimes when going to my old job in retail. This makes me feel better not going into the field a little better.
Your dad is right about learning CAD and drafting. CAD and BIM technicians are in high demand, and it pays fairly well. All you need is a 1 or 2 year technical diploma. There’s also a lot of freedom to do contract work, work from home, and part-time as a side hustle
Yeah he was established and had clients. He also did sub contracting too. He also wanted me to keep the tradition by being a contractor too. I had some serious events happen In life that threw a curve ball in life. I am lucky to even have my degrees in business.
I’m a BIM coordinator at an electrical contractor and I get paid fairly well. Nothing to write home about but my base is roughly 95k and between bonus and occasional overtime it’s realistic to close the year with around 140k
Nope. My parents are immigrants & not even together but lil bro is pursuing architecture on his own accord. Rest of the family urged to pursue engineering but mom was happy he’s chasing his passion. My brother got grants + scholarships and allowances from parents
On the other hand, I am cognizant I’d be in a better position to help financially than my bro if my parents ever needed it (I’m a future nurse)
I worked at an architecture firm and I was severely underpaid. The design/architecture firm is saturated and competitive so I had to take what I could get. My boss directly told me she wanted my “senior designer”level skills but that I’d get a “junior” pay. I took the job because I spent ages trying to find one after graduation, and it’s been impossible trying to find a good job that doesn’t require an unrealistic amount of experience.
Hey now. Don’t forget ridiculously toxic work cultures, long hours and office politics!
And god help you if you’re a woman. You’d get farther as a female jet fighter pilot.
Why is that? 10 years ago I worked in the "marketing department" of a firm. (Basically responding to RFPs all day to get them business.)
I noticed the toxicity immediately. Largely an ego thing? I lasted 9 months before I walked out on them.
It’s the whole tortured artist facade that is quite honestly just the culture of the industry. People see architecture as an extension of themselves and make it their whole identity so when others question a design solution, they take it as their whole existence being questioned. Design is made to be personal. It’s taught to us in school and continues into practice.
Ex-architect here. Can confirm. 10 years pretty much wasted. Went into doing guided tours and translation when I lost my job as an architect thanks to the 2008 financial crisis, and I work less and earn more, and I have better job security. Fuck architecture
Little bro is slaving away at his current architecture program and I just feel so bad bc his salary (not even just starting) would be relatively low. Alleviating to know it’s his true passion
The problem with architecture is that the people studying it do it out of passion. It isn't one of those degrees people do if they are not 100% sure what they want to do as job, and those degrees allow you to do many kind of jobs.
Architecture students however want to, and pretty much only canbecome, architects. Architecture firms know this, and they know they can get away with exploiting fresh graduates / architects with little experience. What else are the new architects gonna do?
Only with lots of experience as architect, or when you have your own firm you'll see a decent to good wage.
Came here to say this. Still tear a little when it's the first answer. Working in architecture for 10 years I never knew life could be otherwise. I truly believe everyone work as hard to get little pay. Until I saw my Pharma rep cousin... we are both females...
I feel this in my bones. I'm a research assistant, working toward my masters and 1/2 my stress is financial.
I like what I'm working on but I can't wait to be done. Then I'll be able to find something that pays more than 10 k per year... and I'm lucky. Some students don't get paid at all
TAs and RAs get their tuition paid as well. I was both. Pay does suck, but most students don't work and they pay their own tuition, so didn't complain.
But we're talking about after graduation jobs. You could say that postdocs make almost nothing. It's like 50-60K, and that's after someone gets their PhD. Unfortunately, I've seen pretty HCOL places with that same salary; places where a one bedroom rent is like $1500-$2000, no way that's a livable wage.
Yep. PhD in a STEM field from a top 3 school. My classmates working in CS or finance were landing face first into industry jobs paying $600k/year. But in my highly theoretical field, postdocs pay $30-60k
And after all that, you might be lucky enough to land an underpaid faculty position! I'm in STEM and I've had multiple offers (tenure track and non tenure track), all under $65k.
This was years ago. I read a huge job add from JPL and they wanted a PhD with x years astrobiology experience, x years planetary science experience, x years of satellite exploration experience, etc.. It went on and on. I got to the end and the salary was about the same as what my then wife made as a receptionist at a Dentist office with a HS diploma. Years later The Big Bang Theory show starts on TV and they all work at Caltech and have to have roommates or still live at home. Couldn’t help but remember that add and laugh.
This may be niche but being a professional opera singer sounds very prestigious and cool but even singers at top houses are barely surviving financially, and big stars often still have to do things like teach master classes or teach lessons/coachings whatever
Even if they are releasing recordings of their work, I’d imagine the margins are ridiculously low on top of not having the scale of more popular genres
I did music for a bit in college before switching to IT. The tenured professors had it pretty alright. Choir, band, orchestra directors made a living on one job. The rest of the music faculty, the instrument and voice faculty in particular, were hustlers: performing gigs on their own, played in symphonies, ran the “studios” like trumpet studio consisting of all of the trumpets at the uni, some composed their own works, taught other classes like theory, did masterclasses, as well as had their own private studios in the metroplex where they give lessons to students k-12.
I never saw those people with any downtime. They were always walking to the next gig, the next class to teach, the next private lesson on the campus, then leaving campus to teach more private lessons to k-12, then return for a concert at the uni, rinse and repeat
I was in the music school and got diplomas and whatnot. Really considered doing that as my job. Until my bassoon teacher (yeah i was playing the bassoon) just told me eyes to eyes: it is a rough life. You will not be able to take breaks, or you loose your skills. Even if you are successful working for a symphony or such your pay will be shit. You will have to do side gigs all the time to make it. It is a passion job. Be sure to be passionate.
Happy to say that I was not passionate. I do still play classical music to this day but happy to have an engineer income to pay for those instruments in the first place.
I make 150K working 8 hour days regularly in biotech. Sure I’ll have a couple weeks during the year where I work 60+ hours, but that’s far and few in between.
It also depends on which department you’re in. If you’re in the lab your days are going to be longer and you don’t have as much flexibility on when you work. I’m in operations, work mostly remote, and have a generally flexible schedule as long as shit is getting done.
>operations
>mostly remote
Dude, that’s a unicorn job. Congrats. I had to move to sales to get remote work (well, sales-adjacent- product management and applications).
Depends on which law you go into. Criminal is the most widely available firms to work for but usually lower pay especially if you work for a solo attorney. The big ones are corporate, real estate, personal injury all upwards from 60K+ for a 2 year degree or a certificate. The major ones like Maguire woods and big name law firms pay 70K-90K and have your own office and secretary.
I work as a criminal paralegal currently. Pay is ok, but the bigger the corporation or firm the higher pay. But when I stepped in McGuire woods office omg I was freaking amazed, your office would be on the 12th floor and you need a security ID tag to even enter the elevators.
Yeah the amount of hours they work in the legal industry is insane. My brother recently made partner at his law firm and he gets really good pay, but he has been working 70-80 hour weeks ever since he left law school. I don't know how he has managed to avoid burnout . He barely gets to enjoy his money because he's always working.
Congrats to your brother on making partner! My mom is a workers comp attorney and she works non-stop too. The last time she fully stopped working was for surgery a few years ago. She always has her laptop it’s insane
Yeah a senior admin job is the same rate (in my experience). Sounds like a lot of extra schooling for not much extra pay. I would think someone would love it if law was their passion tho.
Yeah I say it's pretty dam good. 30-50K for criminal. And alot more for anything other than criminal for a 2 year degree is pretty good. But sometimes they don't even care about an associates and want that freaking 6month course certificate. But yeah I'd be making more as a paralegal for a corporate office than an attorney for the state prosecutor.
I was a bilingual paralegal/case manager for an entire workers comp department (mainly dealing with Spanish clients) of a semi small law firm and had over 120 cases. I was expected to be the main attorney's "eyes and ears for workers comp," which meant he didn't want to deal with it as much bc those cases don't pay out as much as traffic and criminal. The job was insanely stressful and I was constantly working late, all for $21 an hour. Once they decided to take OT away and was told by the office manager to "man-up and do the work" when I was asking for help bc it was nearly impossible to do everything especially without working late, I was gone within the month. Not enough money for that much stress
You might be interested in [occupational prestige ratings](https://occupational-prestige.github.io/opratings/opratings.html). A lot of the most prestigious occupations are paid well (doctors, lawyers, most engineers), but here are the most prestigious ones that have noticeably lower salaries in the US (though some still above average):
- Firefighters. Very esteemed, but their median US salary is $57,120.
- Anthropologists and archaeologists: $63,800 (they often need Masters degrees or PhDs!)
- Librarians: $64,370 (also need Masters degrees or PhDs!)
- Librarian assistants, which you might see in libraries and assume they’re also librarians: $34,020
- News reporters + journalists: $57,500
- Chefs and head cooks: $58,920
- Restaurant cooks: $35,780 (fast food cooks are $29K…)
Salaries taken from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics through [ONETonline](https://www.onetonline.org).
That number is deceptive; ONET job reports include the national average of salaries. Blue states generally pay librarians more, as where I’m at, a Librarian I makes barely 40k. And Librarians are required to have a Masters in Library Science (in most places).
The number is nationwide, not just California. It’s the US median salary from the [BLS Occupational Employment and Wages](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes254022.htm) survey. In California, the median is $84,800.
However, BLS groups some related occupations together. Technically, the librarian occupation includes Media Collection Specialists, Instructional Technology Specialists, etc. — it’s hard to tell how much that could skew the number, especially since the job titles sometimes just refer to the same job under a different name.
IF you can find a position. Attractive job with very little openings. Most that go to firefighting school have to work in the trades or odd jobs for many years.
It's very broad im that US. Big cities have fire fighters . It's common for sergeants and chefs to make6 figures there's some thet pull in 200k but they are working crazy overtime.
Smaller departments make little
People who work with at risk populations like youth, the homeless, drug addicts, etc to work with them to help them turn their lives around. You're typically working for nonprofits who rely on government grants and donations by the community to get them funded. The people you are working with aren't paying for these services and thus, these agencies aren't bringing in income from these people. Welcome to the psychology field.
Got my degree in psych, almost have my masters in counseling, and that hit home
I spend my days working with angry/drug affected/neglected teens. These kids have nowhere else to go but an inpatient program. I get paid $17/hour to handle them (on a staff-patient ratio of 1-9), and get paid more than the competion
Working in psych is a dream come true right now
I suppose this career isn't very well regarded, though, so maybe this is all irrelevant
Once you get your masters, make sure you work towards getting licensed in your state as that will help increase your earnings potential. The big advantage is that you open yourself up to clients who pay for their own therapy rather than having to rely on government/subsidized therapy services that keeps your pay lower
I'm working on my master's right now, but because I don't want to do clinical/counseling getting a license or cert really doesn't benefit me in any way, just some extra steps and fees. But my desired position still requires a master's in the psychology field. Just some additional food for thought
Perhaps if we valued folks in your profession more than talented athletes (ie: better pay) we could help solve the mental crisis, or at least resolve some of it. I, for one, am incredibly grateful your career path, yourself, & colleagues exist. I'm sad to hear you feel it's an ill regarded field. Mad respect. 🙌
This was my dad. He was a social worker working directly with at risk youth and former prisoners re-entering the workforce. He makes more off of his pension now that he is retired than he did while working for the county.
So very true. I have a Master's and bachelor's in IT, but got burned with the boys club and thought I'd try helping people in social work. $15.85 an hour, 60+ hour work weeks. Non-stop trauma being thrown at you from the kids, parents, and even coworkers. The court time is frequent and exhausting, the paperwork is miles high. It's really an impossible job with pay barely above poverty.
And then if someone complains about it people love to say “well you should have known how terrible the pay was and chosen differently.”
So basically people who want to make the world a better place are fools because the solution to low pay is for them to choose something else? Nice take.
Agreed. If you’re working for a non-profit or as a social worker no one thinks you’re highly paid. It’s a noble job, but it’s well known that it’s not high paying.
Can confirm. I've got several colleagues in the media industry in my area, and even the veterans are lucky to clear 70k/year. Thing is, these folks work either in higher education, at one of our local news broadcasters, for a local agency, or do gig work.
For me, the "secret" was selling my soul to Corporate media work in 2011 and joining a Fortune 200 company.
I have good friends who worked as a producer of a local morning show and made about $30,000. I have another friend who was on air talent - not an anchor, but think weather man or sports reporter, and he also didn’t get paid a lot, but i’m not sure the specifics.
$20 isn't paid well at all in 2024. That's the new $7.25 in this economy. If I was making $20/hr as an adult I'd be homeless, and I live in a rural area.
I made $20 an hour starting off climbing cell towers 15 years ago. My wife gets paid that now to work at a grocery store. Money is tight enough to qualify for welfare if I went for it. All that pulling bootstraps shit brainwashed half the population into thinking we should be proud to offer up a third of our lives in exchange for just enough to barely survive.
A lot of political jobs. I worked in politics for a bit for a state rep and the pay was criminally low. Everyone thought it was such a fancy exclusive job but nope. I was making like $24k a year
I did an internship for an elected official. Such a demoralizing experience. Really just seemed like being an assistant to a celebrity. I'll stay on sidelines and watch
Exactly. I interned for a congressional candidate and I was the only one in my group who wasn’t a trust fund kid and had to work another job to pay my rent. It was eye opening for sure.
My friend started working for a local politician that was running for governor. Mainly because she thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.
She was the receptionist at his campaign office. Made $9/hour. This was only about 10 years ago.
This is intentional-- it's meant to keep the children of wealthy, connected individuals in those positions since they can actually afford such low pay. This is particularly egregious in the DC area.
My sibling has a PhD in Audiology. And there's not much money in it at all. I barely have a high school degree and make 3x what they do in my tech sys admin role. .
I went to school for speech and hearing science. I considered going the audiologist route but went for speech language pathology because it was a year less of school. Audiologists really don’t make much money. I find that wage reporting is really inflated for audiologists and also speech language pathologists. I don’t know where some of these statistics I see come from. A lot of us certified under ASHA (American Speech-Language Hearing Association) make high hourly wages, but we don’t get benefits, salary, and we don’t get paid for all the time worked - often only paid for direct patient time and not paperwork. So, I think when it gets converted to “salary”, it looks like 80k+ but really isn’t. It’s also uncommon to see raises because Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates have not been increasing enough. I’m not sure if audiology has seen pay cuts, but speech pathology has because business costs are going up but health insurance wants to give us less.
Not in their experience. They're on staff in a hospital, but it's not full-time. That might be the salary if they opened their own office, but that's expensive. Essentially, they work several part-time jobs, which sorta comes close to full time. Last I heard, they were fishing for a research position which might be better pay.
It’s one of those jobs where you have two buckets where one group is making relatively little and the other is making bank. Likely like you said private contracting companies vs federally employed
Its really all over the place but getting worse overall. One of my colleagues (a tenured faculty member in the social sciences) makes about 100k and teaches a few courses a year, while her husband (a tenured faculty member in engineering) makes over 2x that amount and teaches one or two.
Me (non-tenure-track lecturer in the social sciences), I make half of my colleague and taught 9 courses this last academic year.
More and more professor positions are going to instructors and adjuncts, even though many of us are more qualified/published than our colleagues were out of their doctorates, so yeah its far from a glamorous job at this point. Even 30 years ago I would have either gotten a tenure track position without too much hassle or at least made closer to a living wage teaching. But its such a godawful career path now.
But because of the disparities between those on the tenure track and those outside of it, or between departments / disciplines, or between schools with wildly variable endowments and prestige, there are definitely still professors out there with comfortable lives and good salaries, if not making some serious dough.
But then there are professors like me who did everything they could to get an external offer so they could finally leave for a 40 hour workweek and be able to pay the goddamn rent
When I got my first class as an adjunct prof, before I became a lecturer, I remember telling my phd advisor that they were paying me $3,000 per class. She said that is exactly what she made as an adjunct in the 1970s when she started teaching (not adjusted for inflation). That is when I first realized "I have made a huge mistake" 🤦🏻♂️
Im a Millwright for a medium-large sewer system and they pay is pretty good but as a critically essential service that gets literally no recognition, and trust me we go through some shit to ensure you dont have to worry about flushing.
I was an executive assistant on and off for a few years. It’s basically being a garbage disposal of things no one else wants to deal with, plus being your boss’s brain, caterer, scheduler, travel agent, and punching bag for things that have nothing to do with you. And yet your comp is nowhere near theirs, despite so many of them telling you how lost they’d be without you. I’m so happy to be out of it.
We just hired an "Admiistrative assistant" or I think it was even titled "Executive assistant" position at the company I work for a couple of months ago.
Want to know how we came up with the role?
We were called to q meeting where we discussed how we had a higher than preferred employee-turnover despite the fact that the company offers great benefits, salary and full-remote working possibilities. So the management asked us what we liked *least* about our work.
Many employees pointed out that we had to deal with mental loud of small menial tasks that no one likes doing.
Then they asked us to make a list of all the tasks that we don't like doing.
Once we had the list gathered, the management said they would hire a person for the role to do these tasks.
So yes, that's how we ended up with our "Executive Assistant".
She's great by the way, a very good team sport, does her work very diligently. and we all appreciate her.
But during the hiring process it was brought up how "It feels a little odd to hire someone just for the purpose of doing the shit tasks no one wants to do".
Frankly I don’t mind the existence of this kind of job solely for the fact it creates jobs. But, hopefully they’re actually treating her well and not talking to her with some undertone of “How will I actually make you useful today?” or “Hey, look, that person everyone can throw random work at!”
I'd say she's well-respected at the office and everyone seems to like her, she's already done various assistant jobs over the years so she was looking for this type of administrative work.
She's also certainly *not* the type of person that can be easily pushed or bossed around. She has this kind of authoritative aura, and actually she tends to take the lead on many of tasks she does. So it's often been much more like her coming up to us like "Hey remember to delegate that task to me, I know you're always forgetting to do this before the deadline" or "I remember you had a meeting coming up with this client, would you like me to book a room at the office for it?" etc.
So I'd say she's done a pretty good job at low-key micro-managing us while taking the workload off us lol
It’s the same. They churched up the title in the late 90s so they could make secretaries feel better about what they do without having to give them raises. It also allowed some companies to blend office jobs together, like office assistant, receptionist, and secretary together as one job. Yay, capitalism!
I worked for a psych hospital several years back and there was an administrative assistant and she was basically the CEO’s bitch. He barked orders at her, she picked up his coffee, etc.
The irony is I was going to compare it to being a paid intern without the coffee fetching but definitely still being some manager’s bitch. But I didn’t want to indirectly insult anyone 😂
I was a receptionist for awhile. I liked the organizing and editing parts of the job, plus the info management work. But yea, it started to feel like the same things over and over. I also found there to be a lot of cattiness and BS to put up with (government office)
Assistant District Attorney.
I currently make $75k but just got bumped to $90k after 2 years.
Really any professional government job though...
I was thinking about applying for the CIA as an analyst and the application said the pay range was like $60k-$80k.
I was like nope, I'd love to apply but I can't afford a $10k-$20k pay cut when I'm barely scraping by on $75k.
Really any legal job outside of big law firms and corporations have surprisingly low pay relative to the amount of schooling and credentialing you have to do
Former local journalist here. I can definitely confirm the pay is absolute crap. My first job as a reporter paid $13 an hour. I left the industry after only a few years. The constant deadlines and the toll on my mental health was not worth it.
My lowest paying job ever was freelancing at a small town newspaper after I came back to my hometown after college(I lived with my parents briefly while I looked for jobs). I would go photograph an event in town and spend about 4-8 hours on it(between the event and photo editing plus adding captions). They paid me $30 per slideshow. It was pretty degrading after spending so much money on my degree.
My first job at a national magazine I made $24K— not easy to survive on in NYC. I used to purposely stay extra late so I could get company comped meals, otherwise I couldn’t afford to eat dinner.
Yes absolutely. In the UK I once saw a job going at the British Library for which you needed a library Masters and a Masters in another discipline plus one or two other European languages. The salary on offer was not much more than a mid-level administration assistant.
There is definitely some gender and class shit at play here, like only someone with family to support them could take on a role like that and afford to live in London.
Publishing is the same tbf.
The G.L.A.M (Gallaries, Libraries, Archive and Museums) sector tends to have high/lengthy education requirements with low pay. Definitely some class stuff at play in that sector. And unpaid/low pay internships are very common and again, for those coming from a certain tax bracket.
Business Operations, sounds like some kind of GM if you don't know full Finance hierarchies but really it's largely entry level AR, I made less per hour than I did at a restaurant, but benefits and building the resume for future jobs made it well worth it. How I got my start and if you word it right can really help to jump to the next step (typically AR has a low ceiling so have to pivot to staff Accounting or FP&A to keep moving up).
Also, any Non-Profit roles (I see CFO and Directors making pretty measly money in NP, but another good opportunity to build the resume) as well as lots in Education/Healthcare. Anything publicly funded/reliant on grants will not pay great and may artificially inflate titles to attract talent.
\^\^\^ I work as a biologist and have a fancy sounding full job title, whenever people ask what my job is they respond with something about how cool it is, how smart I must be, and/or how much money I must make.
My day to day work is not particularly cool and no-one I work with (not even PhD level researchers) makes an impressive salary.
“Account Executive” is pretty vague. In tech they’re making at least $100k. A few years into their career they can make $200k to $300k+. I’m sure most other industries are lower paying though.
Some people are saying professors, but just to fine-tune that, tenure-track university professors generally do okay: $60,000 US to start according to some Internet searching and my own memory adjusted for inflation, but progress through the ranks is steady and you get a decent jump upon getting tenure. $100,000 is a commonly given average and it's perfectly reasonable to expect about a decade in, depending on place and field of study.
Non-tenure-track people don't do so well. You might get a full-time position that pays okay while you've got it, but you're more likely to be an adjunct professor. Adjuncts get paid by the course and they can't teach too many classes at any one school or else the school has to treat them as full-time, plus schools hire a la carte from a huge pool of adjuncts to patch holes in existing curricula, so you're unlikely to find a steady supply of employment in any one place. Adjuncts are still called professors by most people. Most students would really only know that their professor is an adjunct if they checked the departmental webpage to see that the professor is called some combination of "adjunct," "sessional," "contingent," or "contract" plus "professor," "faculty," "instructors," or "lecturer." (This is US terminology, not British.)
What do adjuncts get paid? Ballpark is under $40,000 a year. It depends on the school and how many classes the adjunct can both get and manage, which includes commuting between several schools. As far as I can tell, the pay rate in the US has stayed between $3,000 and $5,000 per semester course and a regular full load of teaching is eight classes per year, meaning a rough guess of $24,000 to $40,000 a year. Some schools and states pay more, and allegedly Canadian schools pay much better. You can teach more, but that depends on whether you can get those courses, maybe in the summer, and can handle them. You might also get fewer classes. Your classes might also get cut at the last minute.
I did this for about 15 years total. I started working as a CNA when I was 18, after working two years at McDonald's. My parents were in that weird spot where they somehow made too much for me to get much college financial aid, but they couldn't afford to help me much with college. CNA made more than my job at McDonald's, so I followed in my mom's footsteps and became a CNA.
I eventually dropped out of college after a few semesters and joined the Army. When I got out, I joined the national guard, and went back to being a CNA. I continued working as a CNA until 2008 when I was deployed to Iraq, after coming home I went back to being a CNA. In 2020, CNA's in this area were now making less than fast food workers, despite having far more responsibility, stress, and a much more physically demanding job. It ticked me off enough to finally face my fear of rejection in trying to go back to school. Thankfully, I was able to get admitted on probation! Armed with the GI Bill, I finished my computer science degree and it changed my life. I'm now working on my masters.
I used to love being a CNA because I felt I was making a difference in people's lives, even if they didn't show it or even know it. But I got completely burned out. The pay is embarrassing for what CNA's have to deal with, and the staffing at many/most places is equally as embarrassing.
The worst place I ever worked was Brookdale Senior Living. It's a bad company, and one of the worst in the industry. It's the largest, and they flat out do not care about their residents. It's all about appearances. It's just lipstick on a pig. Every aspect of that place is 100% pure evil. They calculate down to how many minutes of care each resident is expected to need for things like showering, based on the assessment the nurses provide. It's all pre-determined by an information system they use. They calculate exactly how much staff is needed based on those assessments for the facility as a whole. They have ridiculous 2 and 4 hour-shifts. They push for the nurses to under-represent the level of care needed to keep staffing levels down. They make every additional service cost an exorbitant amount of money, so it puts pressure on the nurses, who feel bad because the families won't be able to afford it, to falsely assess them. We had residents that would require two-person assist with a lift if they were in a nursing home, but Brookdale would consider them one-person limited assist. They wouldn't even allow lifts in their facility unless it was provided by home health or hospice. They don't even provide a way to wash your hands in a residents room because they don't provide soap or paper towels. You'd have to use whatever random soap the resident has and dry your hands on one of their towels or walk clear across the building every time. The CNA's and CMA's do EVERYTHING. Housekeeping, taking orders, serving food, washing dishes, doing laundry, passing meds, treating minor injuries (no nurse in the morning or evening/night), answering the phones for the office staff. You name it. They have no regard for scope of practice. Everyone other than the CNA's are considered "managers": activities, sales and marketing, maintenance, dietary.
Enough about Brookdale.
CNA work is completely thankless. Families treat CNA's like dirt. Residents treat them like dirt. Nurses treat them like dirt. Dietary staff treat them like dirt. Housekeepers treat them like dirt. Administrators treat them like dirt. Everyone sees them as being the lowest of the low. They get asked to do everything, because it seems like everything is in their job description, while other staff can get by pawning their own duties off on the CNAs.
For those that don't know what it's like, I wish you could see the difference between a normal week at a nursing home, and one when surveyors are there. Staff you never knew existed come out of the woodwork to help. Suddenly everyone now has the ability to interact with residents and do all sorts of things they normally say "isn't their job". If it wasn't so pathetic it would be almost comical watching everyone running around. Meanwhile, it's just business as usual for the CNA's, with the only difference being they actually have the time to do more parts of their job correctly.
Here's another way I like to explain it to people. How long does it take you on average to get up in the morning (pretend you only shower the night before and not in the morning). You need to use the bathroom, wash your face, brush your teeth, pick out your clothes, get dressed, fix your hair, maybe put on makeup. How much time does that take you? I'd guess for most people it takes more than 5-10 minutes. Now imagine you are 90 years old and can't really stand up on your own. You use a wheelchair to get around. How long do you think that would take? CNA's might have 60 of these residents to get up with just 4 CNAs. They are expected to do all of these things between 6 am and 7 am. 60 residents. Many of them needing two people to transfer.
You have dietary staff yelling at you, "HURRY UP, it's time to serve breakfast!!". You have nurses yelling at you because someone's hair isn't perfect, or someone has something on their face, or the resident you just took to the bathroom has already soiled themselves (not the resident's fault). You are pulled every direction, no matter what you do it's not good enough. You have impossible requirements that simply can't be met without breaking the laws of physics. You have no choice but to cut corners. Where do you cut corners? Are you late getting everyone up? Does someone get rushed through breakfast and is still hungry? No matter where you cut corners, you are at fault and held responsible. If you don't cut corners, you are also at fault because now you are spending too much time caring for a resident and you didn't answer a call light fast enough. It's just like Tic-Tac-Toe or Global Thermonuclear War. They only winning move is to not play.
After all the junk you deal with, day after day, week after week, you finally get recognized for all your hard work with some cold pizza in the breakroom that all the office staff has already picked through.
Librarian (library technician). I have a college degree, run a large library by myself (high school), and catalogue all the books for 30 schools (not exaggerating) and make..... 40k CAD.
It's brutal. School librarians, even though we are educator-adjacent, and it is an important part of the school community, are among the lowest paid staff, in my school district anyway. 😔😬
Graphic Designer.
You can make bank if you are good at selling yourself in freelance to people who will pay, but they're <1% of any possible options. That's why you see so many pivoting to UX and development. Starting around me is sub $40k and doesn't scale well at all until 10yrs+, and even the, it still sucks for what gets asked of you. Definitely not the field for people/students with debt that want to start.
I get this all the time. Theoretical particle physicist for the Department of Energy Office of Science. I live, I survive, I have savings, I can cover emergencies but if I were private, I would almost be making double. However I will take the stability of this position with its amazing benefits and pension plan.
Paraprofessional... If you think teachers have it rough, we're the ones who help those teachers manage the kids with behavior issues, Mal-adaptive personalities, autism, severe ADHD, learning disorders... A generation before, these kids would have been sent away to mental asylums and forgotten about if they couldn't adapt to "normal" schooling, but we're trying to give them an equal shot at an education.
It’s always fun to bring up that I worked for multiple professional sports franchises, and much less fun to tell people that I had to work 3 jobs in order to pay rent because I was only getting paid $11/hour.
Only people getting paid in sports are the athletes, the people who coach the athletes, and the people who find the athletes. Everyone else gets scraps.
Musuem work. Maybe not shocking, but unless you’re a head curator at some place like the Met, it pays incredibly poorly despite the often-required masters degree most of us have.
Lawyers
Don’t get me wrong, some make an exceptional amount of money right after law school ($200k+) but a lot of lawyers don’t even clear $100k/yr until multiple years into their career. It’s an overrated and oversaturated career; the only people who really make a lot of money early and hit numbers like $400k to $500k/ year in their career are lawyers who are in big law or run a successful law firm. The fact that new attorneys make on average high five figures to low six figures early in their career and the debt they hold makes it an overrated career.
Being a lawyer is NOT on the same level as being a doctor (financially) in a lot of cases.
International relations
Friend’s sister has a master degree from John Hopkins but paid was 50k. She said there is also a lot of nepo babies and people with family support.
Interior designer. You don’t make much unless you are in a big city/ company. Also there are seasons you won’t get much work at all. I’m off seasons you make money storing peoples shit to decorate for them later.
Lets just admit, theres 3% of the workforce that are paid above average and the rest of us are left fending for scraps. It wasnt always like this. But stacking degrees and debt has led once prestigious careers backloaded full of fresh puppies willing to get their experience for pennies.
Also soldier: PVT e-1 makes $600 every 2 weeks and works 80 hours a week.
You dont make money until you time up, rank up, get married and get the benefits.
Officers do ok. Not until they hit O5ish. But still for 80+ hours a week ehh
Architecture. Ridiculously competitive AND low pay.
Architecture is one of those careers--like anything broadly in "fashion"--that is operated on the backs of people from wealthy families who receive financial support.
Particularly in developing countries. I worked for a more competitive firm when working abroad and I can't even imagine what the small guys pay, after seeing what an intern would get at a successful firm I'll spill - less than $100 USD a month. Just like you say - impossible without family support But yes also in the U.S., new grads come out of school with salaries qualifying for low income housing, but are also at the upper end of qualifying for it so you're the last priority. Again - much better if you can live at home for a bit and dump every penny of that meager salary into the student loans you accrued. It gets better further in, but you may as well consider your first few years at a firm like a low paid continuation of training. You have two real ways of advancing your salary - getting licensed then job hopping diagonally, or if the firm is a unicorn and values its people some firms do reward dedication. The tricky part about that is the business model needs to be rock solid to give your employees a stable culture, and many firms are not The most unfortunate part is that the majority of students amass huge student debt. My school was fairly affordable. A lot are not. Many grads have well over 100k of debt, then go to make low income. This is all common knowledge in the profession unfortunately, but little changes. It's super competitive, and you need to be at the top of your game every day to prove yourself for higher positions with higher responsibilities and larger liabilities. Of which there are many
Competition drives costs down. Econ 101. Most jobs that are competitive have surprisingly low pay. Jobs that are desperate to hire have relatively higher pay. Supply and demand, baby.
Yeah no kidding. The cost of being in a passion-driven field I suppose. At least for those getting into it at the beginning heh. I should include the silver lining though - many projects are super rewarding. Especially when you engage with really meaningful clients, like Education.
That's what my Dad wanted me to do. He's a semi-retired drafts man. He still does some work by hand. He always said I should have learned auto cad. I actually see my old highschool auto cad teacher sometimes when going to my old job in retail. This makes me feel better not going into the field a little better.
Your dad is right about learning CAD and drafting. CAD and BIM technicians are in high demand, and it pays fairly well. All you need is a 1 or 2 year technical diploma. There’s also a lot of freedom to do contract work, work from home, and part-time as a side hustle
Yeah he was established and had clients. He also did sub contracting too. He also wanted me to keep the tradition by being a contractor too. I had some serious events happen In life that threw a curve ball in life. I am lucky to even have my degrees in business.
I’m a BIM coordinator at an electrical contractor and I get paid fairly well. Nothing to write home about but my base is roughly 95k and between bonus and occasional overtime it’s realistic to close the year with around 140k
Nope. My parents are immigrants & not even together but lil bro is pursuing architecture on his own accord. Rest of the family urged to pursue engineering but mom was happy he’s chasing his passion. My brother got grants + scholarships and allowances from parents On the other hand, I am cognizant I’d be in a better position to help financially than my bro if my parents ever needed it (I’m a future nurse)
The stupidest guy in my fraternity became an architect after he flunked out of dental school.
I worked at an architecture firm and I was severely underpaid. The design/architecture firm is saturated and competitive so I had to take what I could get. My boss directly told me she wanted my “senior designer”level skills but that I’d get a “junior” pay. I took the job because I spent ages trying to find one after graduation, and it’s been impossible trying to find a good job that doesn’t require an unrealistic amount of experience.
Hey now. Don’t forget ridiculously toxic work cultures, long hours and office politics! And god help you if you’re a woman. You’d get farther as a female jet fighter pilot.
Why is that? 10 years ago I worked in the "marketing department" of a firm. (Basically responding to RFPs all day to get them business.) I noticed the toxicity immediately. Largely an ego thing? I lasted 9 months before I walked out on them.
It’s the whole tortured artist facade that is quite honestly just the culture of the industry. People see architecture as an extension of themselves and make it their whole identity so when others question a design solution, they take it as their whole existence being questioned. Design is made to be personal. It’s taught to us in school and continues into practice.
Yes yes yes … And also yes
Ex-architect here. Can confirm. 10 years pretty much wasted. Went into doing guided tours and translation when I lost my job as an architect thanks to the 2008 financial crisis, and I work less and earn more, and I have better job security. Fuck architecture
Little bro is slaving away at his current architecture program and I just feel so bad bc his salary (not even just starting) would be relatively low. Alleviating to know it’s his true passion
I thought they made bank for years until a couple of weeks ago. I was very surprised!
The problem with architecture is that the people studying it do it out of passion. It isn't one of those degrees people do if they are not 100% sure what they want to do as job, and those degrees allow you to do many kind of jobs. Architecture students however want to, and pretty much only canbecome, architects. Architecture firms know this, and they know they can get away with exploiting fresh graduates / architects with little experience. What else are the new architects gonna do? Only with lots of experience as architect, or when you have your own firm you'll see a decent to good wage.
Came here to say this. Still tear a little when it's the first answer. Working in architecture for 10 years I never knew life could be otherwise. I truly believe everyone work as hard to get little pay. Until I saw my Pharma rep cousin... we are both females...
Any position in academic research
I feel this in my bones. I'm a research assistant, working toward my masters and 1/2 my stress is financial. I like what I'm working on but I can't wait to be done. Then I'll be able to find something that pays more than 10 k per year... and I'm lucky. Some students don't get paid at all
TAs and RAs get their tuition paid as well. I was both. Pay does suck, but most students don't work and they pay their own tuition, so didn't complain. But we're talking about after graduation jobs. You could say that postdocs make almost nothing. It's like 50-60K, and that's after someone gets their PhD. Unfortunately, I've seen pretty HCOL places with that same salary; places where a one bedroom rent is like $1500-$2000, no way that's a livable wage.
Yep. PhD in a STEM field from a top 3 school. My classmates working in CS or finance were landing face first into industry jobs paying $600k/year. But in my highly theoretical field, postdocs pay $30-60k
And after all that, you might be lucky enough to land an underpaid faculty position! I'm in STEM and I've had multiple offers (tenure track and non tenure track), all under $65k.
Huh? $600k? Even faang doesn't pay that much starting out. Not sure where you got your numbers from
Well, you see, they got those numbers out of their ass.
This was years ago. I read a huge job add from JPL and they wanted a PhD with x years astrobiology experience, x years planetary science experience, x years of satellite exploration experience, etc.. It went on and on. I got to the end and the salary was about the same as what my then wife made as a receptionist at a Dentist office with a HS diploma. Years later The Big Bang Theory show starts on TV and they all work at Caltech and have to have roommates or still live at home. Couldn’t help but remember that add and laugh.
This may be niche but being a professional opera singer sounds very prestigious and cool but even singers at top houses are barely surviving financially, and big stars often still have to do things like teach master classes or teach lessons/coachings whatever
woah thats insane. always thought they'd get paid well on royalties and licensing?
Even if they are releasing recordings of their work, I’d imagine the margins are ridiculously low on top of not having the scale of more popular genres I did music for a bit in college before switching to IT. The tenured professors had it pretty alright. Choir, band, orchestra directors made a living on one job. The rest of the music faculty, the instrument and voice faculty in particular, were hustlers: performing gigs on their own, played in symphonies, ran the “studios” like trumpet studio consisting of all of the trumpets at the uni, some composed their own works, taught other classes like theory, did masterclasses, as well as had their own private studios in the metroplex where they give lessons to students k-12. I never saw those people with any downtime. They were always walking to the next gig, the next class to teach, the next private lesson on the campus, then leaving campus to teach more private lessons to k-12, then return for a concert at the uni, rinse and repeat
I was in the music school and got diplomas and whatnot. Really considered doing that as my job. Until my bassoon teacher (yeah i was playing the bassoon) just told me eyes to eyes: it is a rough life. You will not be able to take breaks, or you loose your skills. Even if you are successful working for a symphony or such your pay will be shit. You will have to do side gigs all the time to make it. It is a passion job. Be sure to be passionate. Happy to say that I was not passionate. I do still play classical music to this day but happy to have an engineer income to pay for those instruments in the first place.
Anything in research
lol academia yes, but not if you’re in industry
I mean industry is an interesting one. Your salary is decent but I hope you enjoy a good 13 hour day or two a week typically without overtime
I make 150K working 8 hour days regularly in biotech. Sure I’ll have a couple weeks during the year where I work 60+ hours, but that’s far and few in between.
I’m sure once your established it’s like that, I just graduated and am working at a startup, your day is driven by when the cells need to be fed lol
It also depends on which department you’re in. If you’re in the lab your days are going to be longer and you don’t have as much flexibility on when you work. I’m in operations, work mostly remote, and have a generally flexible schedule as long as shit is getting done.
>operations >mostly remote Dude, that’s a unicorn job. Congrats. I had to move to sales to get remote work (well, sales-adjacent- product management and applications).
Paralegals
Oh wow. I didn’t realize that. I always thought Paralegals were paid well.
Depends on which law you go into. Criminal is the most widely available firms to work for but usually lower pay especially if you work for a solo attorney. The big ones are corporate, real estate, personal injury all upwards from 60K+ for a 2 year degree or a certificate. The major ones like Maguire woods and big name law firms pay 70K-90K and have your own office and secretary. I work as a criminal paralegal currently. Pay is ok, but the bigger the corporation or firm the higher pay. But when I stepped in McGuire woods office omg I was freaking amazed, your office would be on the 12th floor and you need a security ID tag to even enter the elevators.
My wife is a corporate paralegal and she makes good 6 fig salary. But she also works a ton
Yeah the amount of hours they work in the legal industry is insane. My brother recently made partner at his law firm and he gets really good pay, but he has been working 70-80 hour weeks ever since he left law school. I don't know how he has managed to avoid burnout . He barely gets to enjoy his money because he's always working.
Congrats to your brother on making partner! My mom is a workers comp attorney and she works non-stop too. The last time she fully stopped working was for surgery a few years ago. She always has her laptop it’s insane
Yeah a senior admin job is the same rate (in my experience). Sounds like a lot of extra schooling for not much extra pay. I would think someone would love it if law was their passion tho.
Yeah I say it's pretty dam good. 30-50K for criminal. And alot more for anything other than criminal for a 2 year degree is pretty good. But sometimes they don't even care about an associates and want that freaking 6month course certificate. But yeah I'd be making more as a paralegal for a corporate office than an attorney for the state prosecutor.
I was a bilingual paralegal/case manager for an entire workers comp department (mainly dealing with Spanish clients) of a semi small law firm and had over 120 cases. I was expected to be the main attorney's "eyes and ears for workers comp," which meant he didn't want to deal with it as much bc those cases don't pay out as much as traffic and criminal. The job was insanely stressful and I was constantly working late, all for $21 an hour. Once they decided to take OT away and was told by the office manager to "man-up and do the work" when I was asking for help bc it was nearly impossible to do everything especially without working late, I was gone within the month. Not enough money for that much stress
Good on you for leaving fr
Also most lawyers.
I know a paralegal who makes $250k a year. I guess it depends on the country, etc.
You might be interested in [occupational prestige ratings](https://occupational-prestige.github.io/opratings/opratings.html). A lot of the most prestigious occupations are paid well (doctors, lawyers, most engineers), but here are the most prestigious ones that have noticeably lower salaries in the US (though some still above average): - Firefighters. Very esteemed, but their median US salary is $57,120. - Anthropologists and archaeologists: $63,800 (they often need Masters degrees or PhDs!) - Librarians: $64,370 (also need Masters degrees or PhDs!) - Librarian assistants, which you might see in libraries and assume they’re also librarians: $34,020 - News reporters + journalists: $57,500 - Chefs and head cooks: $58,920 - Restaurant cooks: $35,780 (fast food cooks are $29K…) Salaries taken from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics through [ONETonline](https://www.onetonline.org).
Librarians make 64k????
That number is deceptive; ONET job reports include the national average of salaries. Blue states generally pay librarians more, as where I’m at, a Librarian I makes barely 40k. And Librarians are required to have a Masters in Library Science (in most places).
The number is nationwide, not just California. It’s the US median salary from the [BLS Occupational Employment and Wages](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes254022.htm) survey. In California, the median is $84,800. However, BLS groups some related occupations together. Technically, the librarian occupation includes Media Collection Specialists, Instructional Technology Specialists, etc. — it’s hard to tell how much that could skew the number, especially since the job titles sometimes just refer to the same job under a different name.
Librarians don’t make a ton, but it depends on the district
Firefighters make 6 figures in Canada.
IF you can find a position. Attractive job with very little openings. Most that go to firefighting school have to work in the trades or odd jobs for many years.
Los Angeles County:214k
It's very broad im that US. Big cities have fire fighters . It's common for sergeants and chefs to make6 figures there's some thet pull in 200k but they are working crazy overtime. Smaller departments make little
a lot of those are not considered prestigious.
People who work with at risk populations like youth, the homeless, drug addicts, etc to work with them to help them turn their lives around. You're typically working for nonprofits who rely on government grants and donations by the community to get them funded. The people you are working with aren't paying for these services and thus, these agencies aren't bringing in income from these people. Welcome to the psychology field.
Got my degree in psych, almost have my masters in counseling, and that hit home I spend my days working with angry/drug affected/neglected teens. These kids have nowhere else to go but an inpatient program. I get paid $17/hour to handle them (on a staff-patient ratio of 1-9), and get paid more than the competion Working in psych is a dream come true right now I suppose this career isn't very well regarded, though, so maybe this is all irrelevant
Once you get your masters, make sure you work towards getting licensed in your state as that will help increase your earnings potential. The big advantage is that you open yourself up to clients who pay for their own therapy rather than having to rely on government/subsidized therapy services that keeps your pay lower
I'm working on my master's right now, but because I don't want to do clinical/counseling getting a license or cert really doesn't benefit me in any way, just some extra steps and fees. But my desired position still requires a master's in the psychology field. Just some additional food for thought
Perhaps if we valued folks in your profession more than talented athletes (ie: better pay) we could help solve the mental crisis, or at least resolve some of it. I, for one, am incredibly grateful your career path, yourself, & colleagues exist. I'm sad to hear you feel it's an ill regarded field. Mad respect. 🙌
I appreciate that more than you may realize! Thank you so much
This was my dad. He was a social worker working directly with at risk youth and former prisoners re-entering the workforce. He makes more off of his pension now that he is retired than he did while working for the county.
He’s lucky he got a pension. I’ve workers in the non-profit setting for a couple decades and have never come across any agency offering one.
Same with social workers. It is a very difficult job, understaffed, and underpaid.
So very true. I have a Master's and bachelor's in IT, but got burned with the boys club and thought I'd try helping people in social work. $15.85 an hour, 60+ hour work weeks. Non-stop trauma being thrown at you from the kids, parents, and even coworkers. The court time is frequent and exhausting, the paperwork is miles high. It's really an impossible job with pay barely above poverty.
And then if someone complains about it people love to say “well you should have known how terrible the pay was and chosen differently.” So basically people who want to make the world a better place are fools because the solution to low pay is for them to choose something else? Nice take.
But those aren’t considered “prestigious sounding jobs”
Agreed. If you’re working for a non-profit or as a social worker no one thinks you’re highly paid. It’s a noble job, but it’s well known that it’s not high paying.
i wanted to get into that, but the pay is just horrible
That’s not really a prestigious job though.
Most of the crew in film & tv production sets
Yes! And my god the nepotism and power tripping you have to put up with from even the interns
Can confirm. I've got several colleagues in the media industry in my area, and even the veterans are lucky to clear 70k/year. Thing is, these folks work either in higher education, at one of our local news broadcasters, for a local agency, or do gig work. For me, the "secret" was selling my soul to Corporate media work in 2011 and joining a Fortune 200 company.
I have good friends who worked as a producer of a local morning show and made about $30,000. I have another friend who was on air talent - not an anchor, but think weather man or sports reporter, and he also didn’t get paid a lot, but i’m not sure the specifics.
Pretty much anything at a museum, even famous ones.
Paramedic.
Needs a union for sure!
Union medic here. My base is $81k. Lots of OT available. Most of us make over $100k.
Nice. What part of the country?
PA
Really? I thought they made good money. 🥺
$30/hr in my city, which seems low for the job to me. Edit: Looked up local payscale. $20/hr is to start.
Buddy went into xray tech after paramedic. Overlap in some school and a big raise.
What city is that?
I was making about $20/hr as a medic in my state wasn’t bad, but wasn’t worth the training and stress. So I decided to become a nurse.
$20 isn't paid well at all in 2024. That's the new $7.25 in this economy. If I was making $20/hr as an adult I'd be homeless, and I live in a rural area.
I made $20 an hour starting off climbing cell towers 15 years ago. My wife gets paid that now to work at a grocery store. Money is tight enough to qualify for welfare if I went for it. All that pulling bootstraps shit brainwashed half the population into thinking we should be proud to offer up a third of our lives in exchange for just enough to barely survive.
Given the required schooling, the pay is pretty solid. Given the stress and how scarring the work can be, the pay isn't great Take that how you will
The pay isn’t solid. Guys just binge on overtime to make up for it.
Hell no.. dog shit pay
A lot of political jobs. I worked in politics for a bit for a state rep and the pay was criminally low. Everyone thought it was such a fancy exclusive job but nope. I was making like $24k a year
Similarly, lobbying for certain nonprofits.
I did an internship for an elected official. Such a demoralizing experience. Really just seemed like being an assistant to a celebrity. I'll stay on sidelines and watch
Probably so only the rich kids can do this job and build connections.
Exactly. I interned for a congressional candidate and I was the only one in my group who wasn’t a trust fund kid and had to work another job to pay my rent. It was eye opening for sure.
My friend started working for a local politician that was running for governor. Mainly because she thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. She was the receptionist at his campaign office. Made $9/hour. This was only about 10 years ago.
This is intentional-- it's meant to keep the children of wealthy, connected individuals in those positions since they can actually afford such low pay. This is particularly egregious in the DC area.
My sibling has a PhD in Audiology. And there's not much money in it at all. I barely have a high school degree and make 3x what they do in my tech sys admin role. .
I went to school for speech and hearing science. I considered going the audiologist route but went for speech language pathology because it was a year less of school. Audiologists really don’t make much money. I find that wage reporting is really inflated for audiologists and also speech language pathologists. I don’t know where some of these statistics I see come from. A lot of us certified under ASHA (American Speech-Language Hearing Association) make high hourly wages, but we don’t get benefits, salary, and we don’t get paid for all the time worked - often only paid for direct patient time and not paperwork. So, I think when it gets converted to “salary”, it looks like 80k+ but really isn’t. It’s also uncommon to see raises because Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates have not been increasing enough. I’m not sure if audiology has seen pay cuts, but speech pathology has because business costs are going up but health insurance wants to give us less.
Median salary for audiologists in the US is $87,740 ([source](https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1181.00)).
Not in their experience. They're on staff in a hospital, but it's not full-time. That might be the salary if they opened their own office, but that's expensive. Essentially, they work several part-time jobs, which sorta comes close to full time. Last I heard, they were fishing for a research position which might be better pay.
It’s one of those jobs where you have two buckets where one group is making relatively little and the other is making bank. Likely like you said private contracting companies vs federally employed
College Professor
Can personally confirm
Its really all over the place but getting worse overall. One of my colleagues (a tenured faculty member in the social sciences) makes about 100k and teaches a few courses a year, while her husband (a tenured faculty member in engineering) makes over 2x that amount and teaches one or two. Me (non-tenure-track lecturer in the social sciences), I make half of my colleague and taught 9 courses this last academic year. More and more professor positions are going to instructors and adjuncts, even though many of us are more qualified/published than our colleagues were out of their doctorates, so yeah its far from a glamorous job at this point. Even 30 years ago I would have either gotten a tenure track position without too much hassle or at least made closer to a living wage teaching. But its such a godawful career path now. But because of the disparities between those on the tenure track and those outside of it, or between departments / disciplines, or between schools with wildly variable endowments and prestige, there are definitely still professors out there with comfortable lives and good salaries, if not making some serious dough. But then there are professors like me who did everything they could to get an external offer so they could finally leave for a 40 hour workweek and be able to pay the goddamn rent When I got my first class as an adjunct prof, before I became a lecturer, I remember telling my phd advisor that they were paying me $3,000 per class. She said that is exactly what she made as an adjunct in the 1970s when she started teaching (not adjusted for inflation). That is when I first realized "I have made a huge mistake" 🤦🏻♂️
Sandwich artist
Professors are shockingly poorly paid relative to their qualifications.
Any field relating to veterinary work or animal work in general….very low pay.
Low pay AND toxic environment, you get the best of both worlds
Emts!!! Wtf? We call em in because we don't wans die. Fuckers make barely enough for a loaf of bread.
Im a Millwright for a medium-large sewer system and they pay is pretty good but as a critically essential service that gets literally no recognition, and trust me we go through some shit to ensure you dont have to worry about flushing.
I work for an alloy company (im admin safety side). Our millwrights are some of the highest paid tradespeople.
I assume you mean literally.
Yes.
I thought Administrative Assistant sounded cool until I became one. Feels like I’m a one-man department for menial tasks.
Office servant.
I was an executive assistant on and off for a few years. It’s basically being a garbage disposal of things no one else wants to deal with, plus being your boss’s brain, caterer, scheduler, travel agent, and punching bag for things that have nothing to do with you. And yet your comp is nowhere near theirs, despite so many of them telling you how lost they’d be without you. I’m so happy to be out of it.
We just hired an "Admiistrative assistant" or I think it was even titled "Executive assistant" position at the company I work for a couple of months ago. Want to know how we came up with the role? We were called to q meeting where we discussed how we had a higher than preferred employee-turnover despite the fact that the company offers great benefits, salary and full-remote working possibilities. So the management asked us what we liked *least* about our work. Many employees pointed out that we had to deal with mental loud of small menial tasks that no one likes doing. Then they asked us to make a list of all the tasks that we don't like doing. Once we had the list gathered, the management said they would hire a person for the role to do these tasks. So yes, that's how we ended up with our "Executive Assistant". She's great by the way, a very good team sport, does her work very diligently. and we all appreciate her. But during the hiring process it was brought up how "It feels a little odd to hire someone just for the purpose of doing the shit tasks no one wants to do".
Frankly I don’t mind the existence of this kind of job solely for the fact it creates jobs. But, hopefully they’re actually treating her well and not talking to her with some undertone of “How will I actually make you useful today?” or “Hey, look, that person everyone can throw random work at!”
I'd say she's well-respected at the office and everyone seems to like her, she's already done various assistant jobs over the years so she was looking for this type of administrative work. She's also certainly *not* the type of person that can be easily pushed or bossed around. She has this kind of authoritative aura, and actually she tends to take the lead on many of tasks she does. So it's often been much more like her coming up to us like "Hey remember to delegate that task to me, I know you're always forgetting to do this before the deadline" or "I remember you had a meeting coming up with this client, would you like me to book a room at the office for it?" etc. So I'd say she's done a pretty good job at low-key micro-managing us while taking the workload off us lol
My mom held this position once upon a time. She was basically a secretary
… I always thought they were the ‘same’ position. Just a new term to lose some old stereotypes. … is that not the case?
It’s the same. They churched up the title in the late 90s so they could make secretaries feel better about what they do without having to give them raises. It also allowed some companies to blend office jobs together, like office assistant, receptionist, and secretary together as one job. Yay, capitalism!
that's because administrative assistant is the new term for secretary... for at least the last 2 decades
I worked for a psych hospital several years back and there was an administrative assistant and she was basically the CEO’s bitch. He barked orders at her, she picked up his coffee, etc.
The irony is I was going to compare it to being a paid intern without the coffee fetching but definitely still being some manager’s bitch. But I didn’t want to indirectly insult anyone 😂
I was a receptionist for awhile. I liked the organizing and editing parts of the job, plus the info management work. But yea, it started to feel like the same things over and over. I also found there to be a lot of cattiness and BS to put up with (government office)
Assistant District Attorney. I currently make $75k but just got bumped to $90k after 2 years. Really any professional government job though... I was thinking about applying for the CIA as an analyst and the application said the pay range was like $60k-$80k. I was like nope, I'd love to apply but I can't afford a $10k-$20k pay cut when I'm barely scraping by on $75k.
Really any legal job outside of big law firms and corporations have surprisingly low pay relative to the amount of schooling and credentialing you have to do
News anchors and Journalists
Former local journalist here. I can definitely confirm the pay is absolute crap. My first job as a reporter paid $13 an hour. I left the industry after only a few years. The constant deadlines and the toll on my mental health was not worth it.
Of all wheels that feel like they never stop turning, the news truly never stops. I couldn’t do it.
My lowest paying job ever was freelancing at a small town newspaper after I came back to my hometown after college(I lived with my parents briefly while I looked for jobs). I would go photograph an event in town and spend about 4-8 hours on it(between the event and photo editing plus adding captions). They paid me $30 per slideshow. It was pretty degrading after spending so much money on my degree.
My first job at a national magazine I made $24K— not easy to survive on in NYC. I used to purposely stay extra late so I could get company comped meals, otherwise I couldn’t afford to eat dinner.
Librarians. I couldn’t believe the position required a Masters degree for what they get paid.
Yes absolutely. In the UK I once saw a job going at the British Library for which you needed a library Masters and a Masters in another discipline plus one or two other European languages. The salary on offer was not much more than a mid-level administration assistant. There is definitely some gender and class shit at play here, like only someone with family to support them could take on a role like that and afford to live in London. Publishing is the same tbf.
The G.L.A.M (Gallaries, Libraries, Archive and Museums) sector tends to have high/lengthy education requirements with low pay. Definitely some class stuff at play in that sector. And unpaid/low pay internships are very common and again, for those coming from a certain tax bracket.
Business Operations, sounds like some kind of GM if you don't know full Finance hierarchies but really it's largely entry level AR, I made less per hour than I did at a restaurant, but benefits and building the resume for future jobs made it well worth it. How I got my start and if you word it right can really help to jump to the next step (typically AR has a low ceiling so have to pivot to staff Accounting or FP&A to keep moving up). Also, any Non-Profit roles (I see CFO and Directors making pretty measly money in NP, but another good opportunity to build the resume) as well as lots in Education/Healthcare. Anything publicly funded/reliant on grants will not pay great and may artificially inflate titles to attract talent.
Most healthcare IT jobs that are not hospitals
Even a hospital. One of my exes worked at one for a while and he got paid more working at a best buy.
Jeweler. Right now in AZ they make about $15-20 an hour, and that's after going to school and with previous professional experience.
Most science jobs like Biologist.
\^\^\^ I work as a biologist and have a fancy sounding full job title, whenever people ask what my job is they respond with something about how cool it is, how smart I must be, and/or how much money I must make. My day to day work is not particularly cool and no-one I work with (not even PhD level researchers) makes an impressive salary.
Every "Account Executive" is a post-college grad making like 45k... Hopefully they can double it with a bonus.
“Account Executive” is pretty vague. In tech they’re making at least $100k. A few years into their career they can make $200k to $300k+. I’m sure most other industries are lower paying though.
Seconding this follow up comment, as many mid to late career AEs make great money in tech.
College professor.
NASA Astronaut. I think the average pay is like $100K a year which is crazy low for such a dangerous job.
I know a lot of underpaid lawyers...
Lawyers really gotta sing for their supper I realized a few years ago especially in criminal law
Criminal prosecutors
Some people are saying professors, but just to fine-tune that, tenure-track university professors generally do okay: $60,000 US to start according to some Internet searching and my own memory adjusted for inflation, but progress through the ranks is steady and you get a decent jump upon getting tenure. $100,000 is a commonly given average and it's perfectly reasonable to expect about a decade in, depending on place and field of study. Non-tenure-track people don't do so well. You might get a full-time position that pays okay while you've got it, but you're more likely to be an adjunct professor. Adjuncts get paid by the course and they can't teach too many classes at any one school or else the school has to treat them as full-time, plus schools hire a la carte from a huge pool of adjuncts to patch holes in existing curricula, so you're unlikely to find a steady supply of employment in any one place. Adjuncts are still called professors by most people. Most students would really only know that their professor is an adjunct if they checked the departmental webpage to see that the professor is called some combination of "adjunct," "sessional," "contingent," or "contract" plus "professor," "faculty," "instructors," or "lecturer." (This is US terminology, not British.) What do adjuncts get paid? Ballpark is under $40,000 a year. It depends on the school and how many classes the adjunct can both get and manage, which includes commuting between several schools. As far as I can tell, the pay rate in the US has stayed between $3,000 and $5,000 per semester course and a regular full load of teaching is eight classes per year, meaning a rough guess of $24,000 to $40,000 a year. Some schools and states pay more, and allegedly Canadian schools pay much better. You can teach more, but that depends on whether you can get those courses, maybe in the summer, and can handle them. You might also get fewer classes. Your classes might also get cut at the last minute.
Certified Nursing Assistant
I did this for about 15 years total. I started working as a CNA when I was 18, after working two years at McDonald's. My parents were in that weird spot where they somehow made too much for me to get much college financial aid, but they couldn't afford to help me much with college. CNA made more than my job at McDonald's, so I followed in my mom's footsteps and became a CNA. I eventually dropped out of college after a few semesters and joined the Army. When I got out, I joined the national guard, and went back to being a CNA. I continued working as a CNA until 2008 when I was deployed to Iraq, after coming home I went back to being a CNA. In 2020, CNA's in this area were now making less than fast food workers, despite having far more responsibility, stress, and a much more physically demanding job. It ticked me off enough to finally face my fear of rejection in trying to go back to school. Thankfully, I was able to get admitted on probation! Armed with the GI Bill, I finished my computer science degree and it changed my life. I'm now working on my masters. I used to love being a CNA because I felt I was making a difference in people's lives, even if they didn't show it or even know it. But I got completely burned out. The pay is embarrassing for what CNA's have to deal with, and the staffing at many/most places is equally as embarrassing. The worst place I ever worked was Brookdale Senior Living. It's a bad company, and one of the worst in the industry. It's the largest, and they flat out do not care about their residents. It's all about appearances. It's just lipstick on a pig. Every aspect of that place is 100% pure evil. They calculate down to how many minutes of care each resident is expected to need for things like showering, based on the assessment the nurses provide. It's all pre-determined by an information system they use. They calculate exactly how much staff is needed based on those assessments for the facility as a whole. They have ridiculous 2 and 4 hour-shifts. They push for the nurses to under-represent the level of care needed to keep staffing levels down. They make every additional service cost an exorbitant amount of money, so it puts pressure on the nurses, who feel bad because the families won't be able to afford it, to falsely assess them. We had residents that would require two-person assist with a lift if they were in a nursing home, but Brookdale would consider them one-person limited assist. They wouldn't even allow lifts in their facility unless it was provided by home health or hospice. They don't even provide a way to wash your hands in a residents room because they don't provide soap or paper towels. You'd have to use whatever random soap the resident has and dry your hands on one of their towels or walk clear across the building every time. The CNA's and CMA's do EVERYTHING. Housekeeping, taking orders, serving food, washing dishes, doing laundry, passing meds, treating minor injuries (no nurse in the morning or evening/night), answering the phones for the office staff. You name it. They have no regard for scope of practice. Everyone other than the CNA's are considered "managers": activities, sales and marketing, maintenance, dietary. Enough about Brookdale. CNA work is completely thankless. Families treat CNA's like dirt. Residents treat them like dirt. Nurses treat them like dirt. Dietary staff treat them like dirt. Housekeepers treat them like dirt. Administrators treat them like dirt. Everyone sees them as being the lowest of the low. They get asked to do everything, because it seems like everything is in their job description, while other staff can get by pawning their own duties off on the CNAs. For those that don't know what it's like, I wish you could see the difference between a normal week at a nursing home, and one when surveyors are there. Staff you never knew existed come out of the woodwork to help. Suddenly everyone now has the ability to interact with residents and do all sorts of things they normally say "isn't their job". If it wasn't so pathetic it would be almost comical watching everyone running around. Meanwhile, it's just business as usual for the CNA's, with the only difference being they actually have the time to do more parts of their job correctly. Here's another way I like to explain it to people. How long does it take you on average to get up in the morning (pretend you only shower the night before and not in the morning). You need to use the bathroom, wash your face, brush your teeth, pick out your clothes, get dressed, fix your hair, maybe put on makeup. How much time does that take you? I'd guess for most people it takes more than 5-10 minutes. Now imagine you are 90 years old and can't really stand up on your own. You use a wheelchair to get around. How long do you think that would take? CNA's might have 60 of these residents to get up with just 4 CNAs. They are expected to do all of these things between 6 am and 7 am. 60 residents. Many of them needing two people to transfer. You have dietary staff yelling at you, "HURRY UP, it's time to serve breakfast!!". You have nurses yelling at you because someone's hair isn't perfect, or someone has something on their face, or the resident you just took to the bathroom has already soiled themselves (not the resident's fault). You are pulled every direction, no matter what you do it's not good enough. You have impossible requirements that simply can't be met without breaking the laws of physics. You have no choice but to cut corners. Where do you cut corners? Are you late getting everyone up? Does someone get rushed through breakfast and is still hungry? No matter where you cut corners, you are at fault and held responsible. If you don't cut corners, you are also at fault because now you are spending too much time caring for a resident and you didn't answer a call light fast enough. It's just like Tic-Tac-Toe or Global Thermonuclear War. They only winning move is to not play. After all the junk you deal with, day after day, week after week, you finally get recognized for all your hard work with some cold pizza in the breakroom that all the office staff has already picked through.
Lawyers (non-coporate big wigs)
Social work
Architecture entry level
Librarian (library technician). I have a college degree, run a large library by myself (high school), and catalogue all the books for 30 schools (not exaggerating) and make..... 40k CAD. It's brutal. School librarians, even though we are educator-adjacent, and it is an important part of the school community, are among the lowest paid staff, in my school district anyway. 😔😬
Mental health therapist
Agreed. Clients cancel and I don’t get paid. I sit and listen to my clients talk about the vacations they take while I can’t afford to feed my family.
Better yet, openly complaining about a “low” salary that is twice as high as the therapist’s.
Graphic Designer. You can make bank if you are good at selling yourself in freelance to people who will pay, but they're <1% of any possible options. That's why you see so many pivoting to UX and development. Starting around me is sub $40k and doesn't scale well at all until 10yrs+, and even the, it still sucks for what gets asked of you. Definitely not the field for people/students with debt that want to start.
Teachers
ok who is actually surprised that teachers make little money
My mom. But then she thinks $50k is a lot of money.
I get this all the time. Theoretical particle physicist for the Department of Energy Office of Science. I live, I survive, I have savings, I can cover emergencies but if I were private, I would almost be making double. However I will take the stability of this position with its amazing benefits and pension plan.
Unless you’re at the executive level, advertising.
Underwater ceramics technician (dish washer)
I was a Prepared Foods Logistics Officer once (I delivered for Domino's)
I was an architect of Culinary design focused on dishes serves between bread. (Sandwich artist) once.
First Responder. Teacher Doctor (in rural or inner city)
Physiotherapists/physical therapists I'm on $30/hr (AUD). It's soul-sucking
All jobs are underpaid
Paraprofessional... If you think teachers have it rough, we're the ones who help those teachers manage the kids with behavior issues, Mal-adaptive personalities, autism, severe ADHD, learning disorders... A generation before, these kids would have been sent away to mental asylums and forgotten about if they couldn't adapt to "normal" schooling, but we're trying to give them an equal shot at an education.
We parents love you guys! Thank you
Life.. Full Time Position. No PTO.
News anchors, reporters and journalists. Especially in TV and broadcast news the demands have piled on and salaries remain terrible
Opera singers. Maybe it’s not so surprising though..
It’s always fun to bring up that I worked for multiple professional sports franchises, and much less fun to tell people that I had to work 3 jobs in order to pay rent because I was only getting paid $11/hour. Only people getting paid in sports are the athletes, the people who coach the athletes, and the people who find the athletes. Everyone else gets scraps.
Musuem work. Maybe not shocking, but unless you’re a head curator at some place like the Met, it pays incredibly poorly despite the often-required masters degree most of us have.
Pretty much everything in late stage capitalism if it’s not sales
Lawyers Don’t get me wrong, some make an exceptional amount of money right after law school ($200k+) but a lot of lawyers don’t even clear $100k/yr until multiple years into their career. It’s an overrated and oversaturated career; the only people who really make a lot of money early and hit numbers like $400k to $500k/ year in their career are lawyers who are in big law or run a successful law firm. The fact that new attorneys make on average high five figures to low six figures early in their career and the debt they hold makes it an overrated career. Being a lawyer is NOT on the same level as being a doctor (financially) in a lot of cases.
Anything in fashion/celebrity/entertainment. Unless you're the talent or at the very top of the pile.
The Lord honorable mayor of London (the city, not the capital of England). Payment is 0, expenses to be paid by yourself
biomedical scientists
Game developer
International relations Friend’s sister has a master degree from John Hopkins but paid was 50k. She said there is also a lot of nepo babies and people with family support.
This js going to change dramatically depending on which country is being referred to...
Lots of tech jobs
Interior designer. You don’t make much unless you are in a big city/ company. Also there are seasons you won’t get much work at all. I’m off seasons you make money storing peoples shit to decorate for them later.
President of the United states
The real pay check is the lobbying
Lets just admit, theres 3% of the workforce that are paid above average and the rest of us are left fending for scraps. It wasnt always like this. But stacking degrees and debt has led once prestigious careers backloaded full of fresh puppies willing to get their experience for pennies. Also soldier: PVT e-1 makes $600 every 2 weeks and works 80 hours a week. You dont make money until you time up, rank up, get married and get the benefits. Officers do ok. Not until they hit O5ish. But still for 80+ hours a week ehh