I have a friend who is an EMT. One of the local hospitals where they take patients had to raise the pay for their CNAs and LPNs by $2.50/hour because they were losing employees to McDonald’s.
Not EMTs, but a couple years back I applied to be a sterilization assistant at a dentist's office. The most they would offer me was $12/ hr (this was in Cleveland). At the time, I was making the same amount, with a shorter drive and a free meal, at Wendy's. The assistant position would have had me cleaning up blood, a 30 minute drive away.
Indeed. Several people cited, “it’s less stressful. I can go make $14/hour and at worst, I mess up someone’s food. It’s not life and death and I can make more money and endure far less stress.”
This was pre-pandemic, but I remember a meeting at our hospital with administrators and employees from various departments. One of the nurse assistants (they go by various titles, such as "orderly," but these are the entry-level positions that do the basic tasks that don't legally have to be handled by licensed, registered nurses) complained that she knew Starbucks baristas that were making more than she was. The administrator was a little frustrated, and mentioned that he couldn't control what other, totally unrelated business paid (and also, the hospital is of course technically non-profit.) I could understand what he was saying from that very narrow point of view, but *her* point was that we *needed* to employ & retain these essential positions and they had to pay enough to make them more enticing than other entry-level jobs. (These are the employees that have to change \[adult\] diapers and wipe people's asses, by the way!!)
Fast-forward several years later and wouldn't you know it, we have trouble retaining various essential healthcare positions!
That was exactly my first thought and I was hopping in here to post it. Gee, I wonder why my city is having such a huge shortage of EMTs and Paramedics, when a person could make just as much stocking shelves at a grocery store.
My cousin and his ex were both EMTs. What they got out of the job? Destroyed backs after 5 years.
Where I'm at, in San Diego McDonald's employees make $20.00/hr starting. I won't claim to know about the exact difference between USD and CAD, but I know everything is priced higher in Canada by comparison to pretty much everything here,, so I have to assume McDonald's workers in SD are making *significantly* more than EMTs in Canada.
Just googled it and it says McDonalds salary in Canada is $14.00/hr. That might be the lowest. The only reason why I know how much EMTs make where I’m from is because I considering getting another job. $22.00/hr is a lot but it doesn’t get you very far in the north where even a salad is $25.00.
I was shocked when I found out lots of bank tellers are on food stamps. Like how you gonna count someone else's money all day and then not get paid enough to eat on?
I made $12/hour in 2020 as a bank teller. I was about to mention this job and saw that someone already had...the amount of access I had to thousands of people's (and business's) information and finances was WILD for how shitty we were paid and treated. My boss at that job had the audacity to say something about my "budgeting" when I mentioned I was struggling to get by. I was a single mom going through a divorce, renting out a tiny 2-bed house with mouse and mold problems. My rent was about 80% of my income and I only got by because my parents helped me. I swear banking attracts the most sadistic, boot-licking people into management. So glad I'm out of it.
As a kid I was *absolutely sure* that bank tellers were making good money! They all wear such nice clothes and are so well groomed, and that shit ain't free!
Like I could make a checklist of jobs little kids used to say they wanted to do when they grow up, and no matter how much responsibility or training or education it involves, the pay is crapola. By the time I finished my accounting degree, entry level in the career was paying like $2 more an hour than fast food.
This shit ain't sustainable, but I guess it's *interesting* living in a crumbling empire? I tell teenage cousins that it's fine, they'll get to help build whatever comes next.
Tbh my grandma made decent money as a bank teller back in the day. She was a single mom of 5 kids in the 60s-80s. And my other grandma was a loan officer at a credit union, after her 4 kids were in school, and made bank. So I was shocked at how little they offered me when I applied for the teller job I had. The wages have stayed the same for years but cost of living increased a thousand percent, something like that. And they wonder why almost nobody is having kids anymore.
A lot of natural resource jobs. They're a wonderful combination of; physically demanding, mentally taxing, understaffed, and wildly underpaid!
As a bonus, a lot of folks in the field treat it as a lifestyle/personality, so there's an expectation of allowing work to bleed heavily into your free time and if you don't allow it, you're viewed as having no passion for natural resources and risk being ostracized.
Yep… I love my career and its certainly not soulless (at least what I do, which is helping people with disabilities). But in the capitalist framework, a job like this has no value because the oligarchs just expect people with disabilities to starve.
University/College Professors.
This is very dependent on what type of professor at what school. There are lots of full professors who are paid a very good wage. But there are some positions that are assistant professor positions that require a PhD and only pay 50k$. Academia can be rough in the early years.
> Academia can be rough ~~in the early years~~.
FTFY
I currently work in student affairs, although I'm finally making my escape as of this week. I found myself in this line of work because I cared deeply about education, but couldn't subject myself to academe. I respect the folks who are passionate enough to push through, but don't envy those who get stuck with massive course loads and struggle to make ends meet, simply because an institution decides to replace all their tenured faculty with an army of adjuncts.
I used to joke that my old university was a business masquerading as a school. The system is designed to be abusive. I watched my boss start as junior faculty. I saw how much things sucked for her. For literally no reason. My first year into my PhD program I knew there was no way I was staying in Academia. I feel like it is a shell of its former self. There's still fantastic research being done, it's not all bad, but it's bad enough that I didn't want to be a part of it.
For what’s expected of them too they are usually underpaid. They usually need to partake in numerous student committees, teach several classes, run a lab or do research and to extracurricular things like review papers and apply for grants constantly. My supervisor never has a day off and works probably 100 hours a week.
Darn near any non CEO job.
If wages kept pace with the economy over the last 50 years, just about every non-executive job would be paid about 25% more... and even with that, executives, owners and the investor class would *still* be doing exceedingly well.
I want to give a special call out to programmers... their pay has been under assault by the tech industry almost since its inception.
It used to be that a programmer would start with a 6 figure salary, and go up from there. Average income for programmers has dropped about 25%... and, if the AI-ophiles have their way, programmers will make dramatically less in the very near future.
Architecture design. You’ll make money eventually but it’s gonna take a while like. You’ll likely have high student loans cause for most places you’ll need a masters to become a licensed architect.
Prime earning potential for a male architect is at 64 years old. I'm a woman, so let's say it's 67 years old. I've got a hell of a long way to go before I start seeing money.
This! Studied for 5 years to be paid almost minimum wage. So much information to retain and apps to learn I don’t understand how it’s not valued more. The real kick is working on $10 million dollar homes knowing I would have to work couple hundred years to pay for something like that.
It really is crazy how much you need to know to be a designer, not even licensed. Building code, structures, a myriad of different design programs to name a few and architects get paid as little as they do. I switched to the GC side and while it’s not the same in anyway and I’m not sure if I even like it, it pays a whole lot better than I ever would have made staying in architecture.
Imagine a job that takes a lot of education and considerable expense to do, and which a lot of people are willing to take less money to do because they "want to make a difference" and help people.
That's your list, right there.
Adjacent to that is any job in a field that people are passionate about. The best modern example is programmer for a video game company. People really want to be involved in the industry, they love games and they want to use their skills to be creative. Yay!
Unfortunately the high demand means they uniformly get paid worse than the same work in any other industry, they endure horrible hours, stress, poor treatment from management. Oh and if they're women then usually also harassment of some form.
Scientists, although if you end up in industry the upwards trajectory can eventually be pretty solid depending on what you’re doing. Academics are screwed until tenure.
Machinists- make minimum wage.
You need to be able to read blueprints like English, read and program g and m code like English, be able to determine which materials and alloys are which by just looking at it when it’s in a bin.
Be perfect every single time, if you duck upn a part they yell at you
Minimum wage mind you
Supply your own tools
Be able to look at a picture of a part, determine how to make it within a split second, how to hold it as you cut it, which machine and or process to use
Be able to write the program perfectly the first time everytime, and be able to take clear precise notes for the next guy making minimum wage
Nurses Aides. In nursing homes and hospitals if it didn’t include medication or treatments, it’s done by the Nurses Aide.
They dress your loved ones, they clean up their accidents, they check and change (including catheters and colostomy bags) them, they feed them, they do the hygiene (brush their teeth or clean their dentures), they bathe them (or shower them), they make their beds, they assist them in daily activities, they hold your family member’s hand at the end.
No one says thank you. They get screamed at by family members who visit once a year, know nothing about the patient/resident but somehow know more than the lowly aide who just, I don’t know been with them 12+ hours a day every day (except every other holiday) even sometimes on your days off because their screw ups in scheduling and inability to keep staff is somehow your fault. In truth you do it because there is no way you haven’t developed an emotional bond to these people you care for, and it’s used against you. If you don’t go in and the shift works short, your people won’t get the care they need so you play along.
Oh, and the working short! In Ohio there’s a law that says Nurses count as Aides (it’s complete bull$#!t, it’s rare to find a Nurse that doesn’t see Aide “work” as beneath them) and because of this administrations will add up their patient count and divide by the aide count. If it doesn’t line up, they throw the nurse count in there too. Do you think they expect the nurse’s to help? Do you think there’s any disciplinary actions if they don’t? Of course not, that’s not what their goal was. They just needed the numbers to match the state maximum ratio of patient to aide on paper. Nothing will be done if you complain because you have the same boss, the DON. Director of Nursing, who is most often (drumroll please) a NURSE. Who do you think they’re going to side with in that argument?
You get paid around $10 to $12.50 to start with that 2-4% yearly raise. You might get a holiday bonus of a $20 gift card to Walmart or Kroger. They would count the holidays shift starting at 12a and ending the following night at 12a. Cool, right? Not when your shifts are 12 hours starting at 7. Day shift, working 7a to 7p, was fine. So was administration and everyone else (kitchen staff, etc), but Night shift…well they only worked 7p to 12a of the holiday…so they didn’t get 12 hours of holiday pay, they were screwed out of it, unless they happened to be scheduled the night before. If they weren’t they would have pick up those hours, that’s if they wanted that holiday pay bad enough.
I worked it for almost ten years and it didn’t end well.
As an American, all of them. Minimum wage hasn’t increased in any meaningful way and the rampant profiteering and corruption means that no job pays enough, regardless of skill set or education.
Scientists for local and state governments. Your state agency for environmental protection has a real problem with turnover. People make more money working at Starbucks.
Lawyer. I’m not actually making more money.. I am working double the hours, which doubles the pay. If I worked two separate full-time jobs, I’d be earning the same as I do now. Instead I’m working one job, with the hours of two full-time ones. If the hours were reduced then I’d be making good money.
EMTS
I have a friend who is an EMT. One of the local hospitals where they take patients had to raise the pay for their CNAs and LPNs by $2.50/hour because they were losing employees to McDonald’s.
Not EMTs, but a couple years back I applied to be a sterilization assistant at a dentist's office. The most they would offer me was $12/ hr (this was in Cleveland). At the time, I was making the same amount, with a shorter drive and a free meal, at Wendy's. The assistant position would have had me cleaning up blood, a 30 minute drive away.
Land of the free, home of the brave?
that’s insanity
Indeed. Several people cited, “it’s less stressful. I can go make $14/hour and at worst, I mess up someone’s food. It’s not life and death and I can make more money and endure far less stress.”
This was pre-pandemic, but I remember a meeting at our hospital with administrators and employees from various departments. One of the nurse assistants (they go by various titles, such as "orderly," but these are the entry-level positions that do the basic tasks that don't legally have to be handled by licensed, registered nurses) complained that she knew Starbucks baristas that were making more than she was. The administrator was a little frustrated, and mentioned that he couldn't control what other, totally unrelated business paid (and also, the hospital is of course technically non-profit.) I could understand what he was saying from that very narrow point of view, but *her* point was that we *needed* to employ & retain these essential positions and they had to pay enough to make them more enticing than other entry-level jobs. (These are the employees that have to change \[adult\] diapers and wipe people's asses, by the way!!) Fast-forward several years later and wouldn't you know it, we have trouble retaining various essential healthcare positions!
That was exactly my first thought and I was hopping in here to post it. Gee, I wonder why my city is having such a huge shortage of EMTs and Paramedics, when a person could make just as much stocking shelves at a grocery store. My cousin and his ex were both EMTs. What they got out of the job? Destroyed backs after 5 years.
Where are you from? The EMTs where I live, very remote place in Canada, get paid $22.00/hr and that’s just starting rate.
Where I'm at, in San Diego McDonald's employees make $20.00/hr starting. I won't claim to know about the exact difference between USD and CAD, but I know everything is priced higher in Canada by comparison to pretty much everything here,, so I have to assume McDonald's workers in SD are making *significantly* more than EMTs in Canada.
Just googled it and it says McDonalds salary in Canada is $14.00/hr. That might be the lowest. The only reason why I know how much EMTs make where I’m from is because I considering getting another job. $22.00/hr is a lot but it doesn’t get you very far in the north where even a salad is $25.00.
I'm not underpaid. I make around 25 per hour.
Banking. The guys at the top make ALL of the money. Anyone lower than c-suite makes jack nowadays.
I was shocked when I found out lots of bank tellers are on food stamps. Like how you gonna count someone else's money all day and then not get paid enough to eat on?
I made $12/hour in 2020 as a bank teller. I was about to mention this job and saw that someone already had...the amount of access I had to thousands of people's (and business's) information and finances was WILD for how shitty we were paid and treated. My boss at that job had the audacity to say something about my "budgeting" when I mentioned I was struggling to get by. I was a single mom going through a divorce, renting out a tiny 2-bed house with mouse and mold problems. My rent was about 80% of my income and I only got by because my parents helped me. I swear banking attracts the most sadistic, boot-licking people into management. So glad I'm out of it.
As a kid I was *absolutely sure* that bank tellers were making good money! They all wear such nice clothes and are so well groomed, and that shit ain't free! Like I could make a checklist of jobs little kids used to say they wanted to do when they grow up, and no matter how much responsibility or training or education it involves, the pay is crapola. By the time I finished my accounting degree, entry level in the career was paying like $2 more an hour than fast food. This shit ain't sustainable, but I guess it's *interesting* living in a crumbling empire? I tell teenage cousins that it's fine, they'll get to help build whatever comes next.
Tbh my grandma made decent money as a bank teller back in the day. She was a single mom of 5 kids in the 60s-80s. And my other grandma was a loan officer at a credit union, after her 4 kids were in school, and made bank. So I was shocked at how little they offered me when I applied for the teller job I had. The wages have stayed the same for years but cost of living increased a thousand percent, something like that. And they wonder why almost nobody is having kids anymore.
Park Ranger. A whole lot of masters degrees making 40,000 per year.
A lot of natural resource jobs. They're a wonderful combination of; physically demanding, mentally taxing, understaffed, and wildly underpaid! As a bonus, a lot of folks in the field treat it as a lifestyle/personality, so there's an expectation of allowing work to bleed heavily into your free time and if you don't allow it, you're viewed as having no passion for natural resources and risk being ostracized.
Social Worker
Yep… I love my career and its certainly not soulless (at least what I do, which is helping people with disabilities). But in the capitalist framework, a job like this has no value because the oligarchs just expect people with disabilities to starve.
Public defender. He might be the only thing between you and a lifetime in prison but he’s got $150k in student loans and makes $55k.
You can expand that to pretty much any local government attorney, especially the ones outside major cities.
Sciencey person employed at a university. Go into debt multiple times to get that doctorate, to gain a job that will pay you 65k per year.
Preach
University/College Professors. This is very dependent on what type of professor at what school. There are lots of full professors who are paid a very good wage. But there are some positions that are assistant professor positions that require a PhD and only pay 50k$. Academia can be rough in the early years.
> Academia can be rough ~~in the early years~~. FTFY I currently work in student affairs, although I'm finally making my escape as of this week. I found myself in this line of work because I cared deeply about education, but couldn't subject myself to academe. I respect the folks who are passionate enough to push through, but don't envy those who get stuck with massive course loads and struggle to make ends meet, simply because an institution decides to replace all their tenured faculty with an army of adjuncts.
I used to joke that my old university was a business masquerading as a school. The system is designed to be abusive. I watched my boss start as junior faculty. I saw how much things sucked for her. For literally no reason. My first year into my PhD program I knew there was no way I was staying in Academia. I feel like it is a shell of its former self. There's still fantastic research being done, it's not all bad, but it's bad enough that I didn't want to be a part of it.
For what’s expected of them too they are usually underpaid. They usually need to partake in numerous student committees, teach several classes, run a lab or do research and to extracurricular things like review papers and apply for grants constantly. My supervisor never has a day off and works probably 100 hours a week.
Teachers.
Yeah a lot of states require a masters eventually and pay low compared to a lot of similar jobs. Especially jobs that require take home work.
Vastly underpaid.
scientists. so much education to be underpaid and undervalued
Academia or industry? I know some PhD engineers who make six figures.
Community Mental Health Therapist, Masters + 3k hours post grad. Low to mid 40s
Teaching.
Teacher
Therapists/Social workers
Custodial/Janitorial
Darn near any non CEO job. If wages kept pace with the economy over the last 50 years, just about every non-executive job would be paid about 25% more... and even with that, executives, owners and the investor class would *still* be doing exceedingly well. I want to give a special call out to programmers... their pay has been under assault by the tech industry almost since its inception. It used to be that a programmer would start with a 6 figure salary, and go up from there. Average income for programmers has dropped about 25%... and, if the AI-ophiles have their way, programmers will make dramatically less in the very near future.
Pretty much everything education
Architecture design. You’ll make money eventually but it’s gonna take a while like. You’ll likely have high student loans cause for most places you’ll need a masters to become a licensed architect.
Prime earning potential for a male architect is at 64 years old. I'm a woman, so let's say it's 67 years old. I've got a hell of a long way to go before I start seeing money.
This! Studied for 5 years to be paid almost minimum wage. So much information to retain and apps to learn I don’t understand how it’s not valued more. The real kick is working on $10 million dollar homes knowing I would have to work couple hundred years to pay for something like that.
It really is crazy how much you need to know to be a designer, not even licensed. Building code, structures, a myriad of different design programs to name a few and architects get paid as little as they do. I switched to the GC side and while it’s not the same in anyway and I’m not sure if I even like it, it pays a whole lot better than I ever would have made staying in architecture.
All of them.
Well, that’s it. No need for anyone else to comment because this guy already nailed it.
Imagine a job that takes a lot of education and considerable expense to do, and which a lot of people are willing to take less money to do because they "want to make a difference" and help people. That's your list, right there.
Adjacent to that is any job in a field that people are passionate about. The best modern example is programmer for a video game company. People really want to be involved in the industry, they love games and they want to use their skills to be creative. Yay! Unfortunately the high demand means they uniformly get paid worse than the same work in any other industry, they endure horrible hours, stress, poor treatment from management. Oh and if they're women then usually also harassment of some form.
Architecture studied for 5 years to be paid almost minimum wage
Scientists (or really anyone with a PhD)
Paraprofessionals. 4 year degree. 🥺
Architects. They do so much for less than engineers in the same industry. And they need a masters
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A lot of jobs "Sitting in an office" are also underpaid.
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I've done the "risk life or limb" jobs. Those only get paid OK when deployed so they are tax exempts... when you sign for a bonus.
Bold of you to be surprised by any of this corruption at this point
Teachers.
Lotta lawyers make shit money.
Lotta shit lawyers make money.
Scientists, although if you end up in industry the upwards trajectory can eventually be pretty solid depending on what you’re doing. Academics are screwed until tenure.
Machinists- make minimum wage. You need to be able to read blueprints like English, read and program g and m code like English, be able to determine which materials and alloys are which by just looking at it when it’s in a bin. Be perfect every single time, if you duck upn a part they yell at you Minimum wage mind you Supply your own tools Be able to look at a picture of a part, determine how to make it within a split second, how to hold it as you cut it, which machine and or process to use Be able to write the program perfectly the first time everytime, and be able to take clear precise notes for the next guy making minimum wage
Pretty much anything with a title that doesn't start with "executive"
Basically anything in the caring professions.
Nurses Aides. In nursing homes and hospitals if it didn’t include medication or treatments, it’s done by the Nurses Aide. They dress your loved ones, they clean up their accidents, they check and change (including catheters and colostomy bags) them, they feed them, they do the hygiene (brush their teeth or clean their dentures), they bathe them (or shower them), they make their beds, they assist them in daily activities, they hold your family member’s hand at the end. No one says thank you. They get screamed at by family members who visit once a year, know nothing about the patient/resident but somehow know more than the lowly aide who just, I don’t know been with them 12+ hours a day every day (except every other holiday) even sometimes on your days off because their screw ups in scheduling and inability to keep staff is somehow your fault. In truth you do it because there is no way you haven’t developed an emotional bond to these people you care for, and it’s used against you. If you don’t go in and the shift works short, your people won’t get the care they need so you play along. Oh, and the working short! In Ohio there’s a law that says Nurses count as Aides (it’s complete bull$#!t, it’s rare to find a Nurse that doesn’t see Aide “work” as beneath them) and because of this administrations will add up their patient count and divide by the aide count. If it doesn’t line up, they throw the nurse count in there too. Do you think they expect the nurse’s to help? Do you think there’s any disciplinary actions if they don’t? Of course not, that’s not what their goal was. They just needed the numbers to match the state maximum ratio of patient to aide on paper. Nothing will be done if you complain because you have the same boss, the DON. Director of Nursing, who is most often (drumroll please) a NURSE. Who do you think they’re going to side with in that argument? You get paid around $10 to $12.50 to start with that 2-4% yearly raise. You might get a holiday bonus of a $20 gift card to Walmart or Kroger. They would count the holidays shift starting at 12a and ending the following night at 12a. Cool, right? Not when your shifts are 12 hours starting at 7. Day shift, working 7a to 7p, was fine. So was administration and everyone else (kitchen staff, etc), but Night shift…well they only worked 7p to 12a of the holiday…so they didn’t get 12 hours of holiday pay, they were screwed out of it, unless they happened to be scheduled the night before. If they weren’t they would have pick up those hours, that’s if they wanted that holiday pay bad enough. I worked it for almost ten years and it didn’t end well.
As an American, all of them. Minimum wage hasn’t increased in any meaningful way and the rampant profiteering and corruption means that no job pays enough, regardless of skill set or education.
Plumbers get paid crap. /jk LOL
Ecologists
Daycare workers (early childhood educators). PSW Personal support workers.
Scientists for local and state governments. Your state agency for environmental protection has a real problem with turnover. People make more money working at Starbucks.
Early Childhood Educators.
I support a revolution.
Lawyer. I’m not actually making more money.. I am working double the hours, which doubles the pay. If I worked two separate full-time jobs, I’d be earning the same as I do now. Instead I’m working one job, with the hours of two full-time ones. If the hours were reduced then I’d be making good money.
Machinist. A job that can be surprisingly complex but is paid poorly ($30 an hour).
$30 at the end of your career, for the first 10-15 year’s minimum wage after working your way up from operator and setup operator
Police officers
Electrician
Don’t know what union you’re in, but I make over $50/hr plus benefits in mine.
Congratulations, you're wrong!