Teachers and social workers
Librarian.
In sweden it needed 4 or 5 (or 4.5?) years of uni, only to have a hard time even getting a job, a job paying really low.
Same in Canada. Good choice.
Social work. It’s criminal.
As an ex social worker in Sweden (both as a case officer and treatment assistant), I can attest to the low pay, garbage benefits (if any) and extremely stressful work.
And the horrifying things you have to see, especially child protection.
Teaching, 100%. Incredibly important, some of the most dedicated people in any field, and they’re paid peanuts. Oh yeah, and they work like 12 hours a day. The way we treat them is a disgrace.
In North Carolina, most teachers have been required to have their Masters degree and additional training, but average less than 30k in my area. Some only make 17k a year.
Hurr durr they get off two months, they’re fine
To the gulag with you
Philosopher
“Look at this asshole, learning how the world works. MAKE HIM SERVE COFFEE WITH THE REST OF THEM”
But why?
Teachers for sure. Highly educated people providing a service that’s absolutely crucial for everybody and they’re paid like shit even before you consider the number of out-of-work hours they end up working.
It’s the worst of all angles… Professions where the professional loves the work and wants to do the work no matter what get exploited more than most AND with public school teachers, they’re stuck with taxpayer decided budgets…
As far as America goes: I WANT EVERYTHING AND I DON’T WANT TO PAY TAXES FOR IT!
That may only be western teachers. One of my family has been living in Sweden and teaching yr5 (only) for about 22 years. I’m pretty sure
- the state pays for supplies, but I know she doesn’t
- she pretty much has the lesson plan set, with some evolution each year
- swedish kids aren’t total assholes as they have support for some of the big causes of assholish kids (unaddressed learning issues)
- she’s good to retire in three years. Already has a little boat!
She got her ticket in Canada and bounced around a bit until she landed this gig. Couldn’t be happier for her.
Unfortunately not a more universal experience :( here in the UK teachers are treated like crap
Teaching.
College degree mandatory, graduate degree preferred.
Yearly continuing education costs.
Out of pocket expenses for classroom materials.
Sometimes providing food for kids who don’t have it.
Famously low salaries and very long hours.
Luckily, underfunding the education of the next generation won’t have any long lasting effects on society, right?
It creates:
- Statistically, a constantly desperate hand-to-mouth workforce that must depend on employers to sustain their existence.
- Armed forces signup incentives.
- Easily-swayed consumers of products and services. (Run by those with access to nepotism and/or education, naturally.)
- And easily manipulated voters.
Underfunding education and having people basically born into debt isn’t a neglectful oversight, it’s a deliberate strategy.
You maybe missed the sarcasm mark, but I admire your optimism that we’d all get the joke.
Where I live, teachers are required to have Masters degrees and the starting wage for teachers is around $45k.
Ruling class is creating a disincentive for teachers
I am sure they think ai can do the job better.
They’ve been paying teachers shit for way longer than AI has been around. AI can’t do much of anything better than people though.
Teachers are horrendously underpaid, but they need to stop complaining about the “hours”. It rings disingenuous to most who know the job.
Unless they are taking afterschool roles they work generally 8-3:00 with a potentially a few hours of work after for grading and lesson planning. This is along with numerous holidays / admin days during the school year.
I say this knowing personally a few teachers who complain about hours, and it seems to be a cultural thing not based in their reported real experiences.
The salary is shit, at least for non-senior roles in my state, but that is not a lot of hours relative to the average wage earner.
Perhaps you misunderstand.
The hours are very high and the classroom time is only a small part of it.
The billed hours are extraordinarily low. :D
Warm and fuzzy feelings of inspiring the next generation are supposed to stand-in for actual wages in the USA.
Also better have plans to fill in that summer gap. I’m sure it’s not fun vaycay time for teachers like it is for a lot of the students.
Ah yes, the “second paycheck”.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
All my teacher friends wind up working 10 hour days on average.
They work during breaks.
They work during summer.
Good teachers don’t just show up for classroom time then disappear.
Then factor in the hours you have to spend at a second job because your main job doesn’t pay a living wage.
I know two teachers personally. This is not the case in my discussions with them and others. Maybe you can enlighten me on what does take 10 hours of time daily?
From speaking them they are absolutely not working from 8:0am - 6:00pm on every day.
Lesson plans are inherited from prior teachers and … yes continuously updated during the year but not at a major time cost every day. Grading takes a few hours for one day either on the weekend or in the evening.
And yes they complain about it constantly… it seems more a cultural thing. They also complain about other teachers complaining 🤣
I’m not touching the issue of summers off because yes that is a different thing, and yes it’s quite hard for them to get real employment.
Again salaries should be higher and support teachers not assuming they can work in the summer… but why conflate this with the daily hours ( which are frankly good as stated by those who I know in the profession as a reason they like and took the job)
Musician. I have 7 years of university level studies and 12 years of work experience, and I make less than median salary in Sweden.
start your own label
Not that kind of musician. I work in a opera orchestra.
Well, start your orchestra label, mate. Pioneer the s#!t out of it
I’m guessing you are joking but I’m not really sure. Point is, I educated myself for a really long time and then I won a position in an orchestra, and my salary is now very low, in comparison. There are other benefits though so I’m not really complaining.
Yea, I was just messing with you.
I do hope your happy tho 🙂
Emt/paramedic
Been this guy in a place where we were even written out of labor laws and started in the early 90’s. When I started I made $6.50/hr and worked 168 hrs per two week rotation as an EMT. As. paramedic after I paid for my own education I got a raise to $8. It was brutal and we were the highest paid in our area. Some were getting $0.60/hr standby and $50 per call in rural areas where you would at that time get a call or two a week.
$50 per call but you can bet the patient is being billed $5k minimum for the ride, probably pocketed by insurance agencies or the hospital execs.
I can’t understand how people are EMTs and why there haven’t been riots over this, but God bless them.
Yes and those EMTs were making around $300/month.
Biology, unless you go into health related stuff.
I’ve heard zoo keeper can be insanely competitive just to get a $0 internship or even pay money to work there and then the real jobs are also poverty level to work with animals.
Dead-end science phds making like $50K a year. Unfortunately, I have to manage/fire a lot of these people. People need to think and calculate carefully before going to grad school.
College professors. Most are part time adjunct, most make garbage pay, work their asses off, while university executives make bank.
Where I live college professors are extremely well paid. Well, at least in private colleges.
TAs earn nearly nothing though.
You can earn money as a TA???
Yeah, sell drugs to students.
Not the lowest, for sure, but I’m going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you’re a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it’s an ergonomic nightmare because you’re picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.
As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it’s really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they’re taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn’t make any more money. In fact they’re losing money because they’re stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.
And don’t even get me started on tool loans. It’s straight up worse than student loans because they’re classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they’re usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.
I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I’ve lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I’m trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it’s all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same “take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work” cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.
Don’t get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you’ve made it your career. And I don’t want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it’s a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.
Public defenders make the list. Last figures I saw average salary is around $65k.
My public defender wasn’t worth a single cent. Justice is a sham, as is evident by Trump still walking around with his head after his heavy treason.
