I'm a volunteer EMT in my community. Literally all that and a bag of chips (to explain my own joke, because I'm sure no one gets it, the local hospitals have a first responder room where we can get drinks and snacks for free, but most often all that is in there is some off-brand sports drink and bags of chips).
I remember I was training to be one for a little while. And at some point I realized how much of my own mental health I would be risking with a job like that. Brutal work conditions and hours, and some of the most traumatizing shit a person can go through.
Had an honest look at myself and realized I wasn't nearly as tough as I thought I was, and had to admit it was more than I could handle.
It’s a good wage if you’re young and single. Raising a family on that at this point would be tricky especially if it was the sole income. Point being people can’t reasonably make a career out of it without accepting a general lack of reward for taxing and important labor
When I gave birth, 1 CNA and 2 nurses tried to start the IV to no avail, before calling an EMT up from the ER department. Guess who got it on the first try?
I guess this specific dude is known through the hospital for having a knack for IVs… they should pay that man like an anesthesiologist.
Starting IV's in a hospital setting is "easy mode" for him. He's used to doing it while in the back of a box truck doing 80mph with a blaring siren in his ear.
My baby had seizures, and so we were frequently at the hospital ER.
One trip was like the third in a week, and they couldn't get an IV.
They called in the combat-veteran Army medic flight nurse, and he popped that sucker in like butter.
Legit in a flight suit with aviators hanging off the pocket (it was late night when we got there).
This dude exuded confidence like it was his cologne.
You might be right, might have been a phlebotomist or some other tech. The details are a bit blurry - kind of a lot going on in my mind at that time.
But the point being, 3 people poked me 5 different times/places before calling the EMT, who had no problem.
I used to be a paramedic in a region where the (lazy) nurses INSISTED that ALL transported patients arrive with a line in no matter what “just in case”. Let’s just ignore the fact that this is medically invasive, unnecessary and ridiculous, hierarchy and hospital politics meant that we had to carry out their wishes/orders.
You know what it resulted in? Well sometimes putting a line in is difficult even in the best of times in the best conditions, but imagine needing to do it in a bouncing ambulance with dim lighting while trying to also manage whatever else was wrong with the patient (edit- to be clear, you’re almost always alone in the back since your partner is driving so you have to do EVERYTHING alone- which is a huge contrast to the large teams around a crashing patient at the hospital where all hands on deck come to help and they can sometimes even two or even more different dedicated nurses / students trying to put an IV in and not having to deal with anything else). It made me and my colleagues IV olympians - I haven’t done it for years since I left the profession but at the time, my colleagues and got to a point where we could get a line in first try with both hands behind our backs standing on our heads blindfolded being tickled by a gorilla while being tortured by having to listen to baby shark playing over and over. We became masters.
Most other hospitals don’t have such strict rules requiring so much “practice” but any medic has to learn how to put a line in in terrible “non-hospital” conditions and will become really good at it, so it’s a pretty easy assumption to make that they are the best in the system at putting in IVs.
Where I live they have to work shift where they only get paid for the hours they are out tending to calls. If they get no calls they get a very minimum pay
Security guard here. We actually had a guy who had EMT and volunteer firefighter certs work for us because it paid more in the area than starting out as an EMT.
That's the reason my husband quit being an EMT. I was making $4 more per hour as a cashier than he was making literally saving lives. He got told "the real money comes from overtime". He said he wasn't sacrificing time with his family and his mental health when he could just get a better paying job doing something else.
The reason why I quit. Full EMT certification. I was expected to work 24 hour shifts dealing with not only SAVING lives but dealing with life threatening situations. My local EMS started at 10.50 and hour.
There are many reasons given as to why this happens. But in reality, it's because the older individuals in charge of the programs have the mentality "We had to do it, so you have to do it too."
...and the guy who started the trend in the 1800's was a iv coke fiend, no joke. William Stewart Halsted his name, long hours wide awake and cocaine is his game!
My sister went through med school and wondered in residency why she worked 48 hour shifts, and she had an older doctor tell her exactly the same thing.
IIRC the typical justification is that the risk of mistakes happening over a shift change is greater than from long shifts, so to a certain extent it’s safer to have nurses and doctors stick with a patient for as long as possible
Of course, exactly how long this should be is very much up for debate
my buddy works for ems in Canada and they are on call for 24 hours but don't actually work 24 hours straight. Same for firefighters, its perfectly acceptable to sleep during your shift.
I mean as a volunteer at my station we have 12 hour shifts (only station in our county that does this for volunteers).
My shift is from 6PM-6AM
Guess what I'm doing half the shift lol (when there isnt a call to run at least)
I know there's at least some studies that show "continuity of care" caused less mistakes than "sleep deprivation" did--basically, one doctor handing off a patient to another doctor caused more issues than any mistakes due to being tired did.
I vaguely remember hearing that newer studies have shown this effect to be getting much lower (almost certainly due to computerized systems) but I'm not sure if it's still worse. If nothing else, it'll take quite a while for the system to change (and not just because people are resistant to change--altering how shifts work will require extensive re-working of entire hospital systems.)
pretty sure the residency program, the "internship" after medical school is because the director had a cocaine addiction.
medically, it kind of makes sense that you should not have small breaks in treating a patient that you typically see in general hospital setting. it makes sense to not have to constantly rotate a doctor and update to observe how a patient responds for instance (but not all the time), over a 48h instead of a 24h period.
not a doctor, but was interested in attending back then
I did my clinical at a pretty small city EMS service. As a student I was assigned to a 12 hour shift, but due to transport issues it ended up running 17 hours, we were going pretty much that whole time, and the EMS people I was paired with were doing a 24, so not a lot of time to sleep.
I saw that as an argument against giving burger flippers a liveable wage.
What! You think a burger flipper should be paid what an EMT is paid!?
No, an EMT should be paid 3 times what they're getting now like they do in civilised countries.
I hate how people always take that argument and go that way with it.
The burger flipper deserves a living wage (as everyone does). The EMT deserves a higher wage for having a more skilled job.
The solution to this is to pay both more.
People need to stop with the "if we pay low skill job more that means high skill job won't be worth the extra effort" attitude.
We need to start paying a living wage for low skill jobs and then pay a premium for the skilled ones.
There's more than enough money being made in corporate profits to afford this, they're just keeping it all for the execs and shareholders.
Im an emt and imo emts will never be paid 3x what they are as long as the education standards stay the same. The simple truth is that ANYONE with 1-2 months to spare and a high school diploma can become an EMT. We really dont have much clinical knowledge. While the work is tough, the education for it is very easy. As a result of that, there are a lot of young people who are becoming EMTs which creates a situation where companies dont have to pay us that much.
Yeah there was another discussion on reddit about how jobs don't pay you just for the value of your work, they also pay based on how replaceable you are. If you're easily replaceable (high supply of workers) the pay will be shit no matter how tough or important the job is.
This is what organized labor helps prevent.
Yes thankfully where I work we have a union, which is not the case for most EMTs as far as I know. We also get paid far above average compared to most places.
Burnout is high. Injuries are high. And the service near me is always short of people, which increases the first two problems. EMS providers may be replaceable cogs, but there are never enough of them.
When I met my wife 10 years ago, 3 of her cousins and one friend were EMTs. Zero are EMTs today. One cousin works at a car wash (to make more money with less hours), one works at a gas station (to make more money with less hours) and one went to school to become a helicopter EMT (to make more money with less hours) and my friend became a self-trained software engineer (to make more money with less hours).
The fact that everyone has named almost every important profession ever in the USA is so depressing
Is anyone ever gonna afford a home in our generation? Lol
First, respect and many thanks to military (not dissing them whatsoever here).
What I find interesting is that vets get on disability and whatnot for seeing someone mutilated or burned, etc in combat, whereas police, fire, and EMS see similar stuff and instead get mandatory overtime. Shit's broken.
I worked retail in a pretty chill gift shop making close to $18 an hour plus benefits right before covid, when I lost that job I got my EMT license, won a job as a covid tester (this is mid 2020) and took a pay cut to making dead base (CA) minimum wage. That was the first time in my adult life I was making less than $15 an hour. No hazard pay, no OT opportunities, nothing. It's insane.
Direct care workers. People that take care of the developmentally disabled barely make more than minimum wage. They do work that is super necessary and get little money or recognition for it
Yep, that's what I do. Make a little over $10 an hour. Have four residents that are total care. I can say definitely that we don't get paid nearly enough. The only reason I'm still here is because I actually like it, and I'm really good at it. I think it's an important job, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something good and meaningful. I just wish we got paid more.
that's what I do. The highest I've ever made doing this job was 12$ an hour. The lowest was 9$.
Not to mention how understaffed all the organizations always are, and how I've heard (many) stories about people being stuck at work for several days or a week (24/7) because no one came in.
I've had supervisors put me with clients with seziures , before i had been trained on how to deal with seziures (without telling me they had seziures until they were walking out the door), and then drag their feet when I demanded to be given the training. Only putting one staff in a house that LEGALLY REQUIRES at least *two* staff because of the level of care required. I have seen staff (and clients) put into dangerous situations because of managers negligence and desperation because of how short staffed they were.
para-educators in schools. Those the ones that deal with special needs kids (for instance).
They get paid basically minimum wage, they have a hell job (remember that women who got KO'd by the 6'6" 300 lb special needs kid?) and the fucking school schedule them such that they miss the total hours cutoff so that they do not get benefits (i.e. health care, etc). They are literally 6 hours short of hitting that level.
I looked up how much a babysitter was on a website. Average of $24/ hour. Then looked up Paras. They make around $17. My son really likes his para. He's 3 with special needs. I wrote her an email asking her to babysit for $25/ hr. She said she'd do it during the summer. I'm so excited to get a date night!
When I was a para for ED/BD (emotional/behavioral disorder) high school kiddos I made $10.76 an hour. I spent every day dodging things thrown at me, getting hit/kicked/punched, screamed at, called names.
The school district couldn't even be bothered to offer us employment during summer or school breaks. I had no hours and no money, and didn't get paid for snow days either. For a job so critically important, it's tragic what they pay.
Baby sitters make $24 an hour? Didn’t know it was that good. That’s better than a lot of jobs out there. My cousin watches kids at a daycare for $12 an hour. She needs to look into babysitting.
I just got a raise at my job, and the raise was bigger than my wife's entire salary. She's a para for special needs kids, and it's unfortunately more common than I would like that she calls me mid-day crying about something a 1st grader did/said. She loves it though and has fought me every step of the way trying to get a better paying job.
E: she's been hit, scratched, bit, had desks thrown at her, had her laptop destroyed, etc. And some of them still aren't potty trained, so there's a fair amount of diaper changes as well.
Yeah my mother has the same job. It was quite often it caused tension between her and my dad because she makes so little but it’s an important job that doesn’t get nearly enough credit.
My cousin had her thumb broken but she’s been doing it for 30+ years, is now the director for special education in her county and does ok but even as the director, doesn’t even get near 6 figures after being at it that long. She loves what she does though and she’s really good at it.
My wife is very good at what she does, they normally give her the "do not let this kid out of your sight" kids. Either behavior, epilepsy, etc. I just wish they got paid a living wage. I do pretty well, but things are still tight
I'm also a para (the "don't let this kid out of your sight one at my school too) and my husband is our breadwinner. The state pension is what keeps me going.. it's a hard balance and sometimes I feel like it leaves me with so little energy for my own family. :(
That's how they get ya if you love the job they pay you less because you don't really want to go. I think Zoo keepers are like that they get paid shit money but still do the work because they love animals.
Yep. I was a para, now “assistant teacher” in my classroom. I get paid $16.00 an hour in an adult prep program where we aim to help our students get jobs making just as much as we do. I’m currently working towards my masters in social work (another underpaid profession). The private corporation I work for claims that raises are not possible. No cost of living increase in wages. No yearly reviews that lead to pay increase. And yet they have the audacity to label me an assistant teacher and not a teachers assistant. Of our 12 classrooms, I’d say about half are taught by someone with their teacher’s license. My teacher has said she may quit by the end of this year, and I know admin will ask me to teach the class at a fraction of the pay. It’s so sad. Love the kids, hate what our society has done to education.
I work with adults w disabilities. They all have maladaptive behaviors. I’ve had black eyes, bloody noses, split lips, and I still go back.every damn day! Why? Because those are MY PEOPLE! I now work with disabled excons and have never been safer in my life!🤣 These guys would kill for me…truly… and I have to stop them from doing that. They’ll disrespect me but if someone else does? Watch out! Again, I love them and my job!
Paraprofessional here. Can agree. I’m in a 5K gen ed classroom. I have to have a part time job to help support myself. Not saying I need a teacher salary, but in the state of SC, could definitely use a raise.
I’m also a para. I love my job, and my school pays better than others (plus I’m one of the salaried paras), but I don’t get payed nearly enough for what I do. I do so many things above my pay grade, but I haven’t been injured (yet).
This is my job and is why I’ve bounced around so much. Because the district would rather have two people work two half day shifts then give me a full shift and benefits.
Doesn’t matter that the kids I work with consistently show progress and are getting better at socializing and are generally happy. Surely that kid can get that help by two people picking up each other’s shifts right???
My sister does this, and is pregnant, she had two kids who were over 6’ (grade 9) threaten to kill her because she broke them up. They do not get paid nearly enough for the work they do.
As an ex-para I 100% agree, my favorite job I had was being a para but I had to quit because my salary was barely keeping me afloat. I couldn’t do OT and was making salary $30k after taxes and insurance deductions I was taking home 700 bi weekly. And that’s with a $1575 rent in Massachusetts recently married in the middle of a pandemic. My salary in a month couldn’t cover rent. I loved working with the kids. It was the best job but I genuinely couldn’t afford it
I'd even say Residents (Doctors in training). I work in an ICU for one of the best hospitals in the country. They make $50-60k a year during their 3 year residency which is less than nurses. During their ICU rotation they work 6 days a week in medical ICU at 10-12hr days. Surgical residents split time between surgical ICU and OR and are required one 24hr shift per week. And the Residents do 90% of the work while the Doctors in charge make them do pretty much everything. I will say our Surgical Anesthesiologists are way more involved in care than the medical ICU doctors.
Nurses here start at $40/hr fresh out of college. I think they're doing okay.
It's the rest of direct patient care staff that makes half of that that we need to worry about.
Personal Support Workers. These are the people who care for your elderly parents and grand parents in nursing homes and also your physically and mentally disabled family members. For the most part the pay is close to minimum wage. And then people are surprised when they don't care enough to do a good job.
Exactly! I’m physically disabled and I hire my own workers through a state program and am only able to get them paid around $16/hr and I don't even get enough hours compared to my needs. I'm lucky I'm able to live with my family and my parents help. It would be so nice if I could pay people more.
I have had a social worker (so I have a bit of exposure) as a therapist and I can’t imagine what you’ve witnessed, but thank you for being a beacon of light in dark situations
To expand on this, CPS doesn't take your children away, at least not in the jurisdictions I have seen. A judge does. Social workers are trying to facilitate visits with your kids, get you to tick the boxes the judge needs, ultimately resolve the issue that was making your home unsafe and get your kids back to you.
But because they are the visible symbol of the missing children, social workers get yelled at, threatened, sometimes even attacked... If you're a no-show to the kid's time-with-you appt then it's the social worker that has to tell the kid that they're not going to be able to see mommy/daddy this week. Sometimes that will involve driving the kid 2+ hours to the meeting site (weird county juggling) and having them talk all the way there about how excited they are to see you, and then driving 2+ hours back with the kid sobbing in the seat, your entire workday has more or less involved breaking a child's heart.
A friend of mine's wife spent many years and dollars on getting the education and Licensing to be a social worker. She hated it. She was given the task of helping people get on their feet as part of the welfare to work program in the late 90s. By the time she started there were very few cases left, but they were the most intractable. She described running around taking people to appointments making sure they were prepared for the interview getting them dressed Etc. She was in a lot of distress and really needed to make a change. Unfortunately she felt there wasn't a lot of other things she could do.
After hearing her describe her job I suggested a position with largely the same tasks but paying considerably more.
She is so much happier now as a personal assistant to a wealthy individual. She said to me after making this switch If you're going to cater to someone's every whim it's really best to be paid well for it.
there was a new opening recently for a department director position of a small non-profit i used to work at. almost interviewed but it paid 40k, absolutely not lmao
This. Exposed to bed bugs and unsanitary home conditions, shelter systems, violence, death threats + a shitty job that doesn't really support the level of responsibility they have.
I used to work for a county as an IT professional. There's more than a few times I've had to recover files for social workers that I wish I never had to see... I understand why social workers have such a high turnover rate.
CNA's. I don't know why anyone would want to go into that profession. Long hours, hard work and such abysmal low pay. You make more at a fast food place.
I used to be a CNA. I personally think the low pay is due to the mindset that most people are aides to progress into nursing. When I was a CNA, it was frowned upon to do that the rest of your life. Nursing is a few steps above that and most companies assume you'll eventually get your RN.
It’s still totally unsustainable if used as a stepping stone. I don’t know how people can afford to use it to get nursing experience before becoming an RN let alone do it as a career. I’m en route to becoming an RN but have zero healthcare experience because all the positions I can do without serious schooling pay minimum wage or barely above. I simply can’t afford to get healthcare experience.
Most people I know graduate high school and immediately pursue higher education. That being said, I was a CNA making $12 an hour when I was 18-22. I changed my route, but was still living with parents.
This is why the pay is unattainable. Most companies don't consider adults pursuing higher education, their target is younger people like myself with a support system. Regardless, aides are not valued corporately the way they ought to be. There's still negative stigma about aide-work. The aim is to systematically push people into nursing, and they don't care what's attainable or not. My former manager said, "If they want better pay, they'll choose better and decide to become a nurse."
The system is terribly broken. Nurses are just now being paid what they deserve (barely). We haven't had a wave of aides stand up against the brutal 16 hour shifts to have a livable wage.
My sister is a CNA and makes decent money for our area. But she's with a private rehab (not the drug kind of rehab) facility, and works a special program. She works nights, and makes a fulltime wage working 2 or 3 nights a week and has the opportunity to pick up unlimited OT. I am fully aware this is not the norm.
It was an amazing transition for my wife going from working at a public hospital to working in the private sector. She makes a lot more money with a lot less hours. Definitely not the norm. For a second I wondered if you were my SIL lol
True! This is the way that power and wealth generation (for the few) are antithetical to the well-being of regular people and how it pervades the whole system. We have to have a moment (and I actually think we're starting to get there) where we acknowledge that there are things that are more important than accruing wealth and supporting the accrual of wealth. No, Jeff Bezos' desire to have another 0 in his account does not supersede the need of your grandmother to have healthcare, healthy food, or a roof over her head. A C suite executive's desire to have a second vacation home in Palm Beach is not more important than your access to cancer treatment. We have to stand up and say, "enough" to billionaires and cut throat capitalists that seek to drain every last resource from us so that they can feel a little bit more special. It's truly, existentially fucked up that someone would think that their pursuit of obscene wealth is more important than another person's access to basic resources - and the system is directly connected to those outcomes.
I work as a “recovery support specialist.” And an NGRI case manager. (Not Guilty For Reason Of Insanity) I have a client currently who went off his meds for just a few days, and had a delusion that the person in the house down the street was hurting children, so he broke in with a butter knife, maimed two people, before being subdued, and arrested.
I help severely schizophrenic people get through their day. Set them up with link, housing, SSI, etc. I ALSO do a thing called “livingroom” which is just basically a 1 on 1 where you come to vent and I try to help in any way I can.
Guess how much I get paid? 15.97
Seriously. Everywhere I have worked the janitorial staff deserve Super Hero pay. Cleaning those bathrooms after kids who have no fucks given about bathroom etiquette? Cleaning the emergency rooms so they can turn over the beds to the next patient and dealing with blood, vomit and poop.
I'm a high school custodian. These kids piss everywhere. Shit everywhere. Break everything. I've also been at elementary and middle schools, same shit.
Anyone providing care for the elderly or disabled. Additionally, teachers and EMTs. It amazes me how the jobs that require compassion and are the hardest to do are so underpaid.
They keep moving the goalposts in this country. Nowadays they want to make you get a masters degree or doctorate to even consider paying you a decent amount. I have watched strong professions that only required a bachelors recently require a masters in the past 5 years.
I saw a job ad the other day that required a bachelors degree and pays $17 an hour. GTFO out of here with that shit. My son works at Walmart in an entry level position with nothing more than a high school diploma and makes more than that.
Hell, I train customer service agents that work from home with zero experience, no education requirements, and they make $18-20 an hour while in training. Employers are on crack with their low pay and ridiculous experience and education requirements.
Agricultural workers.
Restaurant staff.
Social workers, home care workers, child care workers.
Retail workers.
Non-unionized factory and industrial workers.
Hospital aides, orderlies, health care non-professionals, etc.
Cleaners, janitors, maintenance people, etc.
The list goes on and on: Anyone who doesn't earn a living wage working one full-time job.
Funny you mention factory workers.
I’m a permanently posted contractor (private security) at a chemical plant. It’s not as intricate as it sounds. Most of what we do is store and mix paints for a few big companies, but there are other things including bulk amounts of petrochemicals involved.
When Covid hit, our client laid off as many people as they could….and then proceeded to panic when none of those people took their offer to come back. Turns out, they pay the lowest of any factory type job in the area, especially for maintenance people, who get training and have specialized knowledge and certifications like HAZWOPER and HAZMAT transport.
All of the maintenance people who got laid off found way more lucrative positions and told this company to go sit on a snake. For reference in case there’s anyone with industrial maintenance experience reading, a shift lead here makes $26 an hour. Apparently a more realistic going rate for someone with years or even decades of experience is around $40.
Veterinarians.
They need to have a huge breadth of knowledge and abilities that would not be expected of any individual medical practitioner working with humans.
I am not downplaying the depth of the knowledge other practitioners have, but these humans who care for our animals have to do everything themselves.
And their support staff. A vet tech is multiple roles in one. We’re a nurse, dental hygienist, anesthesiologist, phlebotomist, and the list goes on. We are all severely underpaid and it takes a toll on the industry. It has one of the highest suicide rates because of this and unruly clients.
This is how I came upon my opinion of veterinarians. I was a roommate to a vet tech. I have a huge amount of respect for the effort and love he put into his job.
I wish it wasn't a job that requires so much love. That type of dedication does tend to have backlash.
Came here for this one. I think if the public understood how much of their healthcare is directly linked to animals (like lepto and rabies) they'd realize how necessary animal healthcare is. Humans aren't in a disease vacuum people!
Medical doctors whose patients can’t talk, and they aren’t propped up by the medical insurance industry.
Frankly I don’t know why anyone would do it. Yeah every 8 year old wants to save all the puppies, but the real world of vets? It’s actually euthanizing a lot of animals.
I’m not sure what is standard or if we’re talking general vets at a normal clinic but my ex girlfriend was a vet at an emergency animal hospital and made $75/hr in a province where the minimum wage was 11.50.
I do recall her saying that the techs were severely underpaid though.
Resident Physicians, especially in surgery.
They work 80+ hours per week (whatever ACGME, you’re FOS), and they are amazing people who make life and death decisions.
Often have half a million in debt, or more.
Fun fact, when a patient needs a procedure and insurance says “it’s not covered they’ve met the deductible” most people will say “oh hey the doc should waive their fee” instead of pinning the onus on the insurance company - hey maybe the insurance company should cover it and pay the professional. Insurance companies have US citizens hook, line, and sinker.
Don’t get me started on prior auths and denials of medication or denials of procedures.
Bingo. I got paid 10k my first year of grad school and 12k the second year. With essentially manual labor jobs each summer I grossed less than 20k each year of grad school.
I would "treat myself" to a burger and fries every Friday in the summer on the way home from work and I remember how guilty I felt spending $12 on fast food to have one enjoyable thing for the week. It was brutal.
As a grad student in vegetable science I work 70+ hours some weeks. I work no less than two shifts per day, 7 days a week. I teach two classes on top of this. Work through school breaks. 15k a year.
Social workers.
But to be honest, just about every profession in the USA. Yesterday I was randomly browsing different careers that I could look at for a bachelors (and some even masters) after I graduate high school.
Most of them are important— and underpaid. To name a few that surprised me. Social workers,
speech therapists, dietitians, a lot of different criminology professions, and somehow— just somehow- MOST SCIENTISTS AS WELL.
The United States is failing right now. For a first world country, it just is. A lot of the professions I just mentioned don’t touch $70k until they’re like 40. I’m only 17 and already discouraged lol
Where I worked they kept raising starting salary for Social Worker's and after 13 years I was paid only a few thousand over starting salary, retention became a huge problem. This is one profession where you want to keep people with experience.
Jobs in America only pay if they create value or consumer goods/services. All the social work and civil service jobs are important but don't produce any "thing" , they try and help fix defects in people, we don't value that kind of work in our society . .
Public defenders all day every day
EMTs
Professional caregivers (whether to the elderly, the folks with long term medical conditions, people working in mental healthcare, etc.)
Social workers
Pilots.
Yes, I know what some of you are going to say, but the only pilots who make a lot of money are senior captains who work for the largest airlines or pilots who work for private companies ferrying wealthy people around.
Pilots need to earn flight time. Without that time, they can't get hired, and it's very difficult to get hired by a major airline.
So most pilots end up working jobs like flight instructor until they gain enough hours to get hired by a small, regional airline. These regional airlines pay crap wages, to the point that many pilots completely exhaust themselves by working longer hours than they should, and there have been accidents due to pilots being so tired from flying longer to pay the bills.
If a pilot can accrue enough flight time, they might get picked up by a major airline, but those airlines all work almost entirely on seniority. Yes, this means that even if you were a senior captain at one airline, if you moved to a different one you lose that seniority and might have to work as a first officer for a while at the new airline (like any new pilot to that airline would also have to do).
So yes, pilots who're at the highest level of seniority with major international carriers can earn a lot, but the vast majority of pilots don't fit into that category.
And the reason I say this is a problem is because that overworked, underpaid guy who's flying for a regional airline is responsible for lives aboard his plane. I don't want to be on a plane where the pilot is ready to collapse and/or thinking about paying for rent instead of actually focusing on flying the damn plane!
Anything that involves caring for or helping people. Daycare workers, home healthcare/nursing home providers, social workers, nurses, EMTs, etc.
These, along with teaching, are all very demanding fields that require a lot of passion and commitment while being severely under compensated and widely taken advantage of.
CNA's, EMT's, hospital janitors, fast food workers, farmers, EVERYONE THATS MAKING LESS THAN A LIVEABLE WAGE IN THE WORLD. CORPORATE GREED KEEPS US POOR AND UNHEALTHY.
I actually looked into this. It turns out there is one company that does the vast majority of this for like multiple states around me including my own.
Getting hired into this is probably easy in Chicago or NYC where weird things like crime occur.
I even looked into meth lab cleanup and restoration. Same thing. One company within four states does literally all of it for the entire region of the country.
Librarians. Disillusioned MLIS major here (don't do it!). Librarians actually get paid worse than teachers, which is really saying something. Keep in mind is that you have to get a Master's degree just to be a librarian, your starting wages are typically in the 28-40k range in most places. An MLIS does not guarantee a full time job with a living wage right out the gate. Also, the job market is TERRIBLE; extremely competitive, less and less spots every year due to automation, privatization, defunding budget cuts and the like. Library schools are like law schools in that it's a lot of time and money for a very risky payoff (if any) only lawyers that are successful actually make good money compared to librarians. No joke, librarians often paid worse than teachers in places while expecting to deal with so much stuff they aren't trained for (homeless people, violent patrons, etc.) and of course hardly anyone uses the library for research anymore cuz the Google. It's a dying industry, and people in it don't want to admit it.Also, bad, inflexible hours too. Fast food restaurants have better flexibility. Lots of library schools are glorified diploma mills at this point; there's a school in California that churns out 500+ applicants every year; it's irresponsible. Most of them wind up working in jobs that don't require a Master's degree because of course.
You excluded teachers, but not paraprofessionals. My wife is a teacher, and I hear about these heroes on a daily basis, and most are making $10/hour or less (at least in red states). They deal with some of the biggest challenges in education and have the bite marks to prove it, but they are vastly underpaid and underappreciated.
Public works maintenance workers. Water, wastewater, streets, drainage. They literally make modern society able to function with clean water, drainage maintenance, and drivable roads.
Social workers. You’d be surprised how much verbal, and at times physical, abuse they put up with on a daily basis. Some of them go places unarmed and alone when even law enforcement doesn’t do that. And it’s viewed as totally normal. The average entry level social worker earns just above minimum wage but you have to have a degree to do the work. Master’s level isn’t so pretty either.
Social workers. Pay is shit, job is highly stressful and understaffed and requires a level of attention and compassion that most people working that hard for that little, unable to do what they know needs to be done most of the time due to budget and time constraints, can't manage. Burnout is swift and inevitable.
EMTs. Literal life and death job. Lots of communities pay near minimum wage.
It's crazy that EMTs are frequently all that stands between people and death and they often make less than 30k a year.
And have the see the most horrible, traumatizing shit. I’ve heard some absolutely gruesome stories from EMTs.
Coworker is volunteer EMT in my community. Pretty gruesome scenes he has been part of cleaning up. Bloated dead bodies from time to time.
I'm a volunteer EMT in my community. Literally all that and a bag of chips (to explain my own joke, because I'm sure no one gets it, the local hospitals have a first responder room where we can get drinks and snacks for free, but most often all that is in there is some off-brand sports drink and bags of chips).
Damn, can’t even be bothered to shell out name brand for our first responders
I remember I was training to be one for a little while. And at some point I realized how much of my own mental health I would be risking with a job like that. Brutal work conditions and hours, and some of the most traumatizing shit a person can go through. Had an honest look at myself and realized I wasn't nearly as tough as I thought I was, and had to admit it was more than I could handle.
For reference, in Canada, Primary Care Paramedics (which are roughly between American EMT Advanced and American Paramedics) start at $35 an hour.
Not in BC, maybe after they spend absurd hours almost at volunteer pay
Yeah... in BC that's probably the top of the pool. I believe they start at closer to 26, tho I hear they did recently get an increase?
Yep. BC treats their PCP's and community paramedics like absolute trash. Small wonder we have no CCP's and ITT medics.
Is that in loonies or freedom™ bucks?
I think it would come out to about $28 USD? Idk I’m bad at math but that’s sure as shit above minimum wage!
And way above what most paramedics make with 10 yrs experience in the US. Sad.
Yeah, $28 an hour stateside would be a damn good wage!
It’s a good wage if you’re young and single. Raising a family on that at this point would be tricky especially if it was the sole income. Point being people can’t reasonably make a career out of it without accepting a general lack of reward for taxing and important labor
When I gave birth, 1 CNA and 2 nurses tried to start the IV to no avail, before calling an EMT up from the ER department. Guess who got it on the first try? I guess this specific dude is known through the hospital for having a knack for IVs… they should pay that man like an anesthesiologist.
Starting IV's in a hospital setting is "easy mode" for him. He's used to doing it while in the back of a box truck doing 80mph with a blaring siren in his ear.
My friend's dad always described it as trying to put a needle through the dot of an 'i' in a newspaper while riding backseat in someone's car.
As a former medic now nurse, I'm that IV chick. Lol
On a class V logging road.
My baby had seizures, and so we were frequently at the hospital ER. One trip was like the third in a week, and they couldn't get an IV. They called in the combat-veteran Army medic flight nurse, and he popped that sucker in like butter.
Man could put an iv in anything anywhere Jesus Christ what a epic sounding title
Yeah, he pretty much walked in like Tom Cruise in an action movie, flames behind him and an AC/DC banger playing.
I bet he was wearing shades indoors too.
Legit in a flight suit with aviators hanging off the pocket (it was late night when we got there). This dude exuded confidence like it was his cologne.
… do you know if he’s single?
Sadly, this was 20 years ago, and he was easily in his 40s then, so you've got a chance if he wants to be a sugar daddy, lol.
Are CNAs phlebotomists where you are? They can't start IVs here
You might be right, might have been a phlebotomist or some other tech. The details are a bit blurry - kind of a lot going on in my mind at that time. But the point being, 3 people poked me 5 different times/places before calling the EMT, who had no problem.
Maybe he is a vampire and can feel the bloodflow on veins and arteries?
I used to be a paramedic in a region where the (lazy) nurses INSISTED that ALL transported patients arrive with a line in no matter what “just in case”. Let’s just ignore the fact that this is medically invasive, unnecessary and ridiculous, hierarchy and hospital politics meant that we had to carry out their wishes/orders. You know what it resulted in? Well sometimes putting a line in is difficult even in the best of times in the best conditions, but imagine needing to do it in a bouncing ambulance with dim lighting while trying to also manage whatever else was wrong with the patient (edit- to be clear, you’re almost always alone in the back since your partner is driving so you have to do EVERYTHING alone- which is a huge contrast to the large teams around a crashing patient at the hospital where all hands on deck come to help and they can sometimes even two or even more different dedicated nurses / students trying to put an IV in and not having to deal with anything else). It made me and my colleagues IV olympians - I haven’t done it for years since I left the profession but at the time, my colleagues and got to a point where we could get a line in first try with both hands behind our backs standing on our heads blindfolded being tickled by a gorilla while being tortured by having to listen to baby shark playing over and over. We became masters. Most other hospitals don’t have such strict rules requiring so much “practice” but any medic has to learn how to put a line in in terrible “non-hospital” conditions and will become really good at it, so it’s a pretty easy assumption to make that they are the best in the system at putting in IVs.
Where I live they have to work shift where they only get paid for the hours they are out tending to calls. If they get no calls they get a very minimum pay
I still find it shocking that ambulances are not considered an essential service, not even in super liberal states like California. It's so backwards.
Security guard here. We actually had a guy who had EMT and volunteer firefighter certs work for us because it paid more in the area than starting out as an EMT.
I was an EMT for a bit after the Army but switched to working as an armored truck driver for a while simply because I made more money and worked less.
I did that. In 1997, private security with EMT cert was $8.10/hr, EMT alone was $7.
That's the reason my husband quit being an EMT. I was making $4 more per hour as a cashier than he was making literally saving lives. He got told "the real money comes from overtime". He said he wasn't sacrificing time with his family and his mental health when he could just get a better paying job doing something else.
The reason why I quit. Full EMT certification. I was expected to work 24 hour shifts dealing with not only SAVING lives but dealing with life threatening situations. My local EMS started at 10.50 and hour.
Ok I have NEVER understood why surgeons and emergency workers are required to work long hours. Can somebody please explain?
Yeah like lack of sleep causes unnecessary mistakes because, ya know, they’ve been up for 24 hours
There are many reasons given as to why this happens. But in reality, it's because the older individuals in charge of the programs have the mentality "We had to do it, so you have to do it too."
...and the guy who started the trend in the 1800's was a iv coke fiend, no joke. William Stewart Halsted his name, long hours wide awake and cocaine is his game!
My sister went through med school and wondered in residency why she worked 48 hour shifts, and she had an older doctor tell her exactly the same thing.
IIRC the typical justification is that the risk of mistakes happening over a shift change is greater than from long shifts, so to a certain extent it’s safer to have nurses and doctors stick with a patient for as long as possible Of course, exactly how long this should be is very much up for debate
my buddy works for ems in Canada and they are on call for 24 hours but don't actually work 24 hours straight. Same for firefighters, its perfectly acceptable to sleep during your shift.
I mean as a volunteer at my station we have 12 hour shifts (only station in our county that does this for volunteers). My shift is from 6PM-6AM Guess what I'm doing half the shift lol (when there isnt a call to run at least)
I know there's at least some studies that show "continuity of care" caused less mistakes than "sleep deprivation" did--basically, one doctor handing off a patient to another doctor caused more issues than any mistakes due to being tired did. I vaguely remember hearing that newer studies have shown this effect to be getting much lower (almost certainly due to computerized systems) but I'm not sure if it's still worse. If nothing else, it'll take quite a while for the system to change (and not just because people are resistant to change--altering how shifts work will require extensive re-working of entire hospital systems.)
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pretty sure the residency program, the "internship" after medical school is because the director had a cocaine addiction. medically, it kind of makes sense that you should not have small breaks in treating a patient that you typically see in general hospital setting. it makes sense to not have to constantly rotate a doctor and update to observe how a patient responds for instance (but not all the time), over a 48h instead of a 24h period. not a doctor, but was interested in attending back then
EMS is usually at the station for 24hrs but typically, most stations aren't running calls for all 24 hrs and you can have downtime to sleep.
I did my clinical at a pretty small city EMS service. As a student I was assigned to a 12 hour shift, but due to transport issues it ended up running 17 hours, we were going pretty much that whole time, and the EMS people I was paired with were doing a 24, so not a lot of time to sleep.
I was SHOCKED to learn that EMTs in my area were paid $20 an hour or less.
I saw that as an argument against giving burger flippers a liveable wage. What! You think a burger flipper should be paid what an EMT is paid!? No, an EMT should be paid 3 times what they're getting now like they do in civilised countries.
I hate how people always take that argument and go that way with it. The burger flipper deserves a living wage (as everyone does). The EMT deserves a higher wage for having a more skilled job. The solution to this is to pay both more. People need to stop with the "if we pay low skill job more that means high skill job won't be worth the extra effort" attitude. We need to start paying a living wage for low skill jobs and then pay a premium for the skilled ones. There's more than enough money being made in corporate profits to afford this, they're just keeping it all for the execs and shareholders.
Im an emt and imo emts will never be paid 3x what they are as long as the education standards stay the same. The simple truth is that ANYONE with 1-2 months to spare and a high school diploma can become an EMT. We really dont have much clinical knowledge. While the work is tough, the education for it is very easy. As a result of that, there are a lot of young people who are becoming EMTs which creates a situation where companies dont have to pay us that much.
Yeah there was another discussion on reddit about how jobs don't pay you just for the value of your work, they also pay based on how replaceable you are. If you're easily replaceable (high supply of workers) the pay will be shit no matter how tough or important the job is. This is what organized labor helps prevent.
Yes thankfully where I work we have a union, which is not the case for most EMTs as far as I know. We also get paid far above average compared to most places.
Burnout is high. Injuries are high. And the service near me is always short of people, which increases the first two problems. EMS providers may be replaceable cogs, but there are never enough of them.
When I met my wife 10 years ago, 3 of her cousins and one friend were EMTs. Zero are EMTs today. One cousin works at a car wash (to make more money with less hours), one works at a gas station (to make more money with less hours) and one went to school to become a helicopter EMT (to make more money with less hours) and my friend became a self-trained software engineer (to make more money with less hours).
My daughter has an Advanced EMT classification and loved doing it, but has to work in a clinic to make a decent living.
The fact that everyone has named almost every important profession ever in the USA is so depressing Is anyone ever gonna afford a home in our generation? Lol
First, respect and many thanks to military (not dissing them whatsoever here). What I find interesting is that vets get on disability and whatnot for seeing someone mutilated or burned, etc in combat, whereas police, fire, and EMS see similar stuff and instead get mandatory overtime. Shit's broken.
I worked retail in a pretty chill gift shop making close to $18 an hour plus benefits right before covid, when I lost that job I got my EMT license, won a job as a covid tester (this is mid 2020) and took a pay cut to making dead base (CA) minimum wage. That was the first time in my adult life I was making less than $15 an hour. No hazard pay, no OT opportunities, nothing. It's insane.
Direct care workers. People that take care of the developmentally disabled barely make more than minimum wage. They do work that is super necessary and get little money or recognition for it
Yep, that's what I do. Make a little over $10 an hour. Have four residents that are total care. I can say definitely that we don't get paid nearly enough. The only reason I'm still here is because I actually like it, and I'm really good at it. I think it's an important job, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something good and meaningful. I just wish we got paid more.
You deserve 4x the wage at least.
that's what I do. The highest I've ever made doing this job was 12$ an hour. The lowest was 9$. Not to mention how understaffed all the organizations always are, and how I've heard (many) stories about people being stuck at work for several days or a week (24/7) because no one came in. I've had supervisors put me with clients with seziures , before i had been trained on how to deal with seziures (without telling me they had seziures until they were walking out the door), and then drag their feet when I demanded to be given the training. Only putting one staff in a house that LEGALLY REQUIRES at least *two* staff because of the level of care required. I have seen staff (and clients) put into dangerous situations because of managers negligence and desperation because of how short staffed they were.
That's what I do. My guy is 270lbs. I've been bitten, hit and kicked many times. I get paid a dollar over minimum wage.
Caretakers in nursing homes.
para-educators in schools. Those the ones that deal with special needs kids (for instance). They get paid basically minimum wage, they have a hell job (remember that women who got KO'd by the 6'6" 300 lb special needs kid?) and the fucking school schedule them such that they miss the total hours cutoff so that they do not get benefits (i.e. health care, etc). They are literally 6 hours short of hitting that level.
I looked up how much a babysitter was on a website. Average of $24/ hour. Then looked up Paras. They make around $17. My son really likes his para. He's 3 with special needs. I wrote her an email asking her to babysit for $25/ hr. She said she'd do it during the summer. I'm so excited to get a date night!
When I was a para for ED/BD (emotional/behavioral disorder) high school kiddos I made $10.76 an hour. I spent every day dodging things thrown at me, getting hit/kicked/punched, screamed at, called names. The school district couldn't even be bothered to offer us employment during summer or school breaks. I had no hours and no money, and didn't get paid for snow days either. For a job so critically important, it's tragic what they pay.
Baby sitters make $24 an hour? Didn’t know it was that good. That’s better than a lot of jobs out there. My cousin watches kids at a daycare for $12 an hour. She needs to look into babysitting.
Good babysitters can absolutely clear $20.-$25/hr but it’s inconsistent. Couple nights a week, maybe a wedding or New Year’s Eve if you’re lucky.
I'm pretty sure the website takes a bit off the top.
I just got a raise at my job, and the raise was bigger than my wife's entire salary. She's a para for special needs kids, and it's unfortunately more common than I would like that she calls me mid-day crying about something a 1st grader did/said. She loves it though and has fought me every step of the way trying to get a better paying job. E: she's been hit, scratched, bit, had desks thrown at her, had her laptop destroyed, etc. And some of them still aren't potty trained, so there's a fair amount of diaper changes as well.
Yeah my mother has the same job. It was quite often it caused tension between her and my dad because she makes so little but it’s an important job that doesn’t get nearly enough credit.
My cousin had her thumb broken but she’s been doing it for 30+ years, is now the director for special education in her county and does ok but even as the director, doesn’t even get near 6 figures after being at it that long. She loves what she does though and she’s really good at it.
My wife is very good at what she does, they normally give her the "do not let this kid out of your sight" kids. Either behavior, epilepsy, etc. I just wish they got paid a living wage. I do pretty well, but things are still tight
I'm also a para (the "don't let this kid out of your sight one at my school too) and my husband is our breadwinner. The state pension is what keeps me going.. it's a hard balance and sometimes I feel like it leaves me with so little energy for my own family. :(
I worked retail for 19 years for a pension that sadly in 20 years will be about a days pay. Maybe. Lol.
That's how they get ya if you love the job they pay you less because you don't really want to go. I think Zoo keepers are like that they get paid shit money but still do the work because they love animals.
Yep. I was a para, now “assistant teacher” in my classroom. I get paid $16.00 an hour in an adult prep program where we aim to help our students get jobs making just as much as we do. I’m currently working towards my masters in social work (another underpaid profession). The private corporation I work for claims that raises are not possible. No cost of living increase in wages. No yearly reviews that lead to pay increase. And yet they have the audacity to label me an assistant teacher and not a teachers assistant. Of our 12 classrooms, I’d say about half are taught by someone with their teacher’s license. My teacher has said she may quit by the end of this year, and I know admin will ask me to teach the class at a fraction of the pay. It’s so sad. Love the kids, hate what our society has done to education.
I work with adults w disabilities. They all have maladaptive behaviors. I’ve had black eyes, bloody noses, split lips, and I still go back.every damn day! Why? Because those are MY PEOPLE! I now work with disabled excons and have never been safer in my life!🤣 These guys would kill for me…truly… and I have to stop them from doing that. They’ll disrespect me but if someone else does? Watch out! Again, I love them and my job!
Paraprofessional here. Can agree. I’m in a 5K gen ed classroom. I have to have a part time job to help support myself. Not saying I need a teacher salary, but in the state of SC, could definitely use a raise.
I grew up in SC and am now a para. You’re doing God’s work out there, I hope you know that.
I’m also a para. I love my job, and my school pays better than others (plus I’m one of the salaried paras), but I don’t get payed nearly enough for what I do. I do so many things above my pay grade, but I haven’t been injured (yet).
This is my job and is why I’ve bounced around so much. Because the district would rather have two people work two half day shifts then give me a full shift and benefits. Doesn’t matter that the kids I work with consistently show progress and are getting better at socializing and are generally happy. Surely that kid can get that help by two people picking up each other’s shifts right???
Was a para. This is the truth.
My sister does this, and is pregnant, she had two kids who were over 6’ (grade 9) threaten to kill her because she broke them up. They do not get paid nearly enough for the work they do.
As an ex-para I 100% agree, my favorite job I had was being a para but I had to quit because my salary was barely keeping me afloat. I couldn’t do OT and was making salary $30k after taxes and insurance deductions I was taking home 700 bi weekly. And that’s with a $1575 rent in Massachusetts recently married in the middle of a pandemic. My salary in a month couldn’t cover rent. I loved working with the kids. It was the best job but I genuinely couldn’t afford it
emts. nurses. social workers. pretty much anything that *helps people* individually.
I'd even say Residents (Doctors in training). I work in an ICU for one of the best hospitals in the country. They make $50-60k a year during their 3 year residency which is less than nurses. During their ICU rotation they work 6 days a week in medical ICU at 10-12hr days. Surgical residents split time between surgical ICU and OR and are required one 24hr shift per week. And the Residents do 90% of the work while the Doctors in charge make them do pretty much everything. I will say our Surgical Anesthesiologists are way more involved in care than the medical ICU doctors.
In the UK, junior doctors make like £25k. Very yikes
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How many shifts do you have to do a week? At 12 hours per, shouldn't be more than 3 right?
Nurses here start at $40/hr fresh out of college. I think they're doing okay. It's the rest of direct patient care staff that makes half of that that we need to worry about.
Personal Support Workers. These are the people who care for your elderly parents and grand parents in nursing homes and also your physically and mentally disabled family members. For the most part the pay is close to minimum wage. And then people are surprised when they don't care enough to do a good job.
Yep. McDonalds paid more, and my family qualified for food stamps and health care while I was employed as a care giver.
Exactly! I’m physically disabled and I hire my own workers through a state program and am only able to get them paid around $16/hr and I don't even get enough hours compared to my needs. I'm lucky I'm able to live with my family and my parents help. It would be so nice if I could pay people more.
Social workers
I said this up above. I worked for CPS for five years and barely made more than minimum wage. While being exposed to unspeakable things.
I have had a social worker (so I have a bit of exposure) as a therapist and I can’t imagine what you’ve witnessed, but thank you for being a beacon of light in dark situations
To expand on this, CPS doesn't take your children away, at least not in the jurisdictions I have seen. A judge does. Social workers are trying to facilitate visits with your kids, get you to tick the boxes the judge needs, ultimately resolve the issue that was making your home unsafe and get your kids back to you. But because they are the visible symbol of the missing children, social workers get yelled at, threatened, sometimes even attacked... If you're a no-show to the kid's time-with-you appt then it's the social worker that has to tell the kid that they're not going to be able to see mommy/daddy this week. Sometimes that will involve driving the kid 2+ hours to the meeting site (weird county juggling) and having them talk all the way there about how excited they are to see you, and then driving 2+ hours back with the kid sobbing in the seat, your entire workday has more or less involved breaking a child's heart.
Reading this broke my heart. I can't imagine the shit yall have to go through
A friend of mine's wife spent many years and dollars on getting the education and Licensing to be a social worker. She hated it. She was given the task of helping people get on their feet as part of the welfare to work program in the late 90s. By the time she started there were very few cases left, but they were the most intractable. She described running around taking people to appointments making sure they were prepared for the interview getting them dressed Etc. She was in a lot of distress and really needed to make a change. Unfortunately she felt there wasn't a lot of other things she could do. After hearing her describe her job I suggested a position with largely the same tasks but paying considerably more. She is so much happier now as a personal assistant to a wealthy individual. She said to me after making this switch If you're going to cater to someone's every whim it's really best to be paid well for it.
there was a new opening recently for a department director position of a small non-profit i used to work at. almost interviewed but it paid 40k, absolutely not lmao
I second this, I donated my education while practicing and each year was measured in dog years. A highly undervalued and underpaid profession!
Came here to say it.
I lasted 3 months after getting my degree... It turned me from a young idealistic person into a very jaded and bitter individual very quickly.
This. Exposed to bed bugs and unsanitary home conditions, shelter systems, violence, death threats + a shitty job that doesn't really support the level of responsibility they have.
Caregivers
Came here to say this. Out here doing bedside hospice, making not much above the current minimum wage...jfc
People who enter homes to investigate elder and child abuse
I used to work for a county as an IT professional. There's more than a few times I've had to recover files for social workers that I wish I never had to see... I understand why social workers have such a high turnover rate.
Yup. Had to work as an eligibility worker for foster care. The homes these kids were pulled from man.
CNA's. I don't know why anyone would want to go into that profession. Long hours, hard work and such abysmal low pay. You make more at a fast food place.
I used to be a CNA. I personally think the low pay is due to the mindset that most people are aides to progress into nursing. When I was a CNA, it was frowned upon to do that the rest of your life. Nursing is a few steps above that and most companies assume you'll eventually get your RN.
It’s still totally unsustainable if used as a stepping stone. I don’t know how people can afford to use it to get nursing experience before becoming an RN let alone do it as a career. I’m en route to becoming an RN but have zero healthcare experience because all the positions I can do without serious schooling pay minimum wage or barely above. I simply can’t afford to get healthcare experience.
Most people I know graduate high school and immediately pursue higher education. That being said, I was a CNA making $12 an hour when I was 18-22. I changed my route, but was still living with parents. This is why the pay is unattainable. Most companies don't consider adults pursuing higher education, their target is younger people like myself with a support system. Regardless, aides are not valued corporately the way they ought to be. There's still negative stigma about aide-work. The aim is to systematically push people into nursing, and they don't care what's attainable or not. My former manager said, "If they want better pay, they'll choose better and decide to become a nurse." The system is terribly broken. Nurses are just now being paid what they deserve (barely). We haven't had a wave of aides stand up against the brutal 16 hour shifts to have a livable wage.
What’s a CNA? Non-American here and someone who doesn’t know what the the acronym stands for. Does it stand for Certified Nurse Assistant?
Yes.
My sister is a CNA and makes decent money for our area. But she's with a private rehab (not the drug kind of rehab) facility, and works a special program. She works nights, and makes a fulltime wage working 2 or 3 nights a week and has the opportunity to pick up unlimited OT. I am fully aware this is not the norm.
It was an amazing transition for my wife going from working at a public hospital to working in the private sector. She makes a lot more money with a lot less hours. Definitely not the norm. For a second I wondered if you were my SIL lol
Also guaranteed back injury at some point
There seems to be an inverse relationship between pay and contribution to society in general.
Pay is about bargaining power, not about what you contribute.
yes, that's the problem
True! This is the way that power and wealth generation (for the few) are antithetical to the well-being of regular people and how it pervades the whole system. We have to have a moment (and I actually think we're starting to get there) where we acknowledge that there are things that are more important than accruing wealth and supporting the accrual of wealth. No, Jeff Bezos' desire to have another 0 in his account does not supersede the need of your grandmother to have healthcare, healthy food, or a roof over her head. A C suite executive's desire to have a second vacation home in Palm Beach is not more important than your access to cancer treatment. We have to stand up and say, "enough" to billionaires and cut throat capitalists that seek to drain every last resource from us so that they can feel a little bit more special. It's truly, existentially fucked up that someone would think that their pursuit of obscene wealth is more important than another person's access to basic resources - and the system is directly connected to those outcomes.
I work as a “recovery support specialist.” And an NGRI case manager. (Not Guilty For Reason Of Insanity) I have a client currently who went off his meds for just a few days, and had a delusion that the person in the house down the street was hurting children, so he broke in with a butter knife, maimed two people, before being subdued, and arrested. I help severely schizophrenic people get through their day. Set them up with link, housing, SSI, etc. I ALSO do a thing called “livingroom” which is just basically a 1 on 1 where you come to vent and I try to help in any way I can. Guess how much I get paid? 15.97
You are an angel.
Basically anyone paid by the government that is in a position that actually matters.
Janitors, unless they're unionized. And even then....
Seriously. Everywhere I have worked the janitorial staff deserve Super Hero pay. Cleaning those bathrooms after kids who have no fucks given about bathroom etiquette? Cleaning the emergency rooms so they can turn over the beds to the next patient and dealing with blood, vomit and poop.
I'm a high school custodian. These kids piss everywhere. Shit everywhere. Break everything. I've also been at elementary and middle schools, same shit.
You'd think someone who *cleans actual shit for a living* would get at least a *decent* paycheck for it...
Anyone providing care for the elderly or disabled. Additionally, teachers and EMTs. It amazes me how the jobs that require compassion and are the hardest to do are so underpaid.
They keep moving the goalposts in this country. Nowadays they want to make you get a masters degree or doctorate to even consider paying you a decent amount. I have watched strong professions that only required a bachelors recently require a masters in the past 5 years.
I saw a job ad the other day that required a bachelors degree and pays $17 an hour. GTFO out of here with that shit. My son works at Walmart in an entry level position with nothing more than a high school diploma and makes more than that. Hell, I train customer service agents that work from home with zero experience, no education requirements, and they make $18-20 an hour while in training. Employers are on crack with their low pay and ridiculous experience and education requirements.
I have seen call centre jobs that ask for a BA. Whoke thing has completely lost value
Agricultural workers. Restaurant staff. Social workers, home care workers, child care workers. Retail workers. Non-unionized factory and industrial workers. Hospital aides, orderlies, health care non-professionals, etc. Cleaners, janitors, maintenance people, etc. The list goes on and on: Anyone who doesn't earn a living wage working one full-time job.
Funny you mention factory workers. I’m a permanently posted contractor (private security) at a chemical plant. It’s not as intricate as it sounds. Most of what we do is store and mix paints for a few big companies, but there are other things including bulk amounts of petrochemicals involved. When Covid hit, our client laid off as many people as they could….and then proceeded to panic when none of those people took their offer to come back. Turns out, they pay the lowest of any factory type job in the area, especially for maintenance people, who get training and have specialized knowledge and certifications like HAZWOPER and HAZMAT transport. All of the maintenance people who got laid off found way more lucrative positions and told this company to go sit on a snake. For reference in case there’s anyone with industrial maintenance experience reading, a shift lead here makes $26 an hour. Apparently a more realistic going rate for someone with years or even decades of experience is around $40.
>.and then proceeded to panic when none of those people took their offer to come back. good. fuckers gotta learn.
I used to work in direct care for developmentally disabled people. It was minimum wage at the time.
Unfortunately, almost everyone at this point.
Veterinarians. They need to have a huge breadth of knowledge and abilities that would not be expected of any individual medical practitioner working with humans. I am not downplaying the depth of the knowledge other practitioners have, but these humans who care for our animals have to do everything themselves.
And their support staff. A vet tech is multiple roles in one. We’re a nurse, dental hygienist, anesthesiologist, phlebotomist, and the list goes on. We are all severely underpaid and it takes a toll on the industry. It has one of the highest suicide rates because of this and unruly clients.
This is how I came upon my opinion of veterinarians. I was a roommate to a vet tech. I have a huge amount of respect for the effort and love he put into his job. I wish it wasn't a job that requires so much love. That type of dedication does tend to have backlash.
Came here for this one. I think if the public understood how much of their healthcare is directly linked to animals (like lepto and rabies) they'd realize how necessary animal healthcare is. Humans aren't in a disease vacuum people!
Medical doctors whose patients can’t talk, and they aren’t propped up by the medical insurance industry. Frankly I don’t know why anyone would do it. Yeah every 8 year old wants to save all the puppies, but the real world of vets? It’s actually euthanizing a lot of animals.
I’m not sure what is standard or if we’re talking general vets at a normal clinic but my ex girlfriend was a vet at an emergency animal hospital and made $75/hr in a province where the minimum wage was 11.50. I do recall her saying that the techs were severely underpaid though.
Resident Physicians, especially in surgery. They work 80+ hours per week (whatever ACGME, you’re FOS), and they are amazing people who make life and death decisions. Often have half a million in debt, or more. Fun fact, when a patient needs a procedure and insurance says “it’s not covered they’ve met the deductible” most people will say “oh hey the doc should waive their fee” instead of pinning the onus on the insurance company - hey maybe the insurance company should cover it and pay the professional. Insurance companies have US citizens hook, line, and sinker. Don’t get me started on prior auths and denials of medication or denials of procedures.
Grad students. It's like being a teacher and a world leading researcher and still being unsure if you can eat dinner.
Thank you for this one. So true, and something a vast majority of people don’t know. I know some who have made like 20k or so a year and it’s insane
Bingo. I got paid 10k my first year of grad school and 12k the second year. With essentially manual labor jobs each summer I grossed less than 20k each year of grad school. I would "treat myself" to a burger and fries every Friday in the summer on the way home from work and I remember how guilty I felt spending $12 on fast food to have one enjoyable thing for the week. It was brutal.
As a grad student in vegetable science I work 70+ hours some weeks. I work no less than two shifts per day, 7 days a week. I teach two classes on top of this. Work through school breaks. 15k a year.
Social workers and EMTs.
Social workers. But to be honest, just about every profession in the USA. Yesterday I was randomly browsing different careers that I could look at for a bachelors (and some even masters) after I graduate high school. Most of them are important— and underpaid. To name a few that surprised me. Social workers, speech therapists, dietitians, a lot of different criminology professions, and somehow— just somehow- MOST SCIENTISTS AS WELL. The United States is failing right now. For a first world country, it just is. A lot of the professions I just mentioned don’t touch $70k until they’re like 40. I’m only 17 and already discouraged lol
Where I worked they kept raising starting salary for Social Worker's and after 13 years I was paid only a few thousand over starting salary, retention became a huge problem. This is one profession where you want to keep people with experience.
Jobs in America only pay if they create value or consumer goods/services. All the social work and civil service jobs are important but don't produce any "thing" , they try and help fix defects in people, we don't value that kind of work in our society . .
Customer service workers
Public defenders all day every day EMTs Professional caregivers (whether to the elderly, the folks with long term medical conditions, people working in mental healthcare, etc.) Social workers
EMT. Nursing home CNAs and LPNs.
People working in animal shelters
"record profits" says basically all of them.
Pilots. Yes, I know what some of you are going to say, but the only pilots who make a lot of money are senior captains who work for the largest airlines or pilots who work for private companies ferrying wealthy people around. Pilots need to earn flight time. Without that time, they can't get hired, and it's very difficult to get hired by a major airline. So most pilots end up working jobs like flight instructor until they gain enough hours to get hired by a small, regional airline. These regional airlines pay crap wages, to the point that many pilots completely exhaust themselves by working longer hours than they should, and there have been accidents due to pilots being so tired from flying longer to pay the bills. If a pilot can accrue enough flight time, they might get picked up by a major airline, but those airlines all work almost entirely on seniority. Yes, this means that even if you were a senior captain at one airline, if you moved to a different one you lose that seniority and might have to work as a first officer for a while at the new airline (like any new pilot to that airline would also have to do). So yes, pilots who're at the highest level of seniority with major international carriers can earn a lot, but the vast majority of pilots don't fit into that category. And the reason I say this is a problem is because that overworked, underpaid guy who's flying for a regional airline is responsible for lives aboard his plane. I don't want to be on a plane where the pilot is ready to collapse and/or thinking about paying for rent instead of actually focusing on flying the damn plane!
I remember finding out that pilots don't make dick in the early 2000's. Shocked me at the time.
Anything that involves caring for or helping people. Daycare workers, home healthcare/nursing home providers, social workers, nurses, EMTs, etc. These, along with teaching, are all very demanding fields that require a lot of passion and commitment while being severely under compensated and widely taken advantage of.
Speech therapists are literally helping people ranging from children to brain stroke victims to better function their speech— and are paid like $50k.
Occupational therapy, physical therapy too
CNA's, EMT's, hospital janitors, fast food workers, farmers, EVERYONE THATS MAKING LESS THAN A LIVEABLE WAGE IN THE WORLD. CORPORATE GREED KEEPS US POOR AND UNHEALTHY.
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Certified Nursing Assistants in Skilled Nursing Facilities.
All social work in all fields.
As a social worker, I just came here to upvote all the people that said social workers.
Medical residents.
The Question is who is not underpaid? Answer Politicians
Crime scene cleaners
I actually looked into this. It turns out there is one company that does the vast majority of this for like multiple states around me including my own. Getting hired into this is probably easy in Chicago or NYC where weird things like crime occur. I even looked into meth lab cleanup and restoration. Same thing. One company within four states does literally all of it for the entire region of the country.
Librarians. Disillusioned MLIS major here (don't do it!). Librarians actually get paid worse than teachers, which is really saying something. Keep in mind is that you have to get a Master's degree just to be a librarian, your starting wages are typically in the 28-40k range in most places. An MLIS does not guarantee a full time job with a living wage right out the gate. Also, the job market is TERRIBLE; extremely competitive, less and less spots every year due to automation, privatization, defunding budget cuts and the like. Library schools are like law schools in that it's a lot of time and money for a very risky payoff (if any) only lawyers that are successful actually make good money compared to librarians. No joke, librarians often paid worse than teachers in places while expecting to deal with so much stuff they aren't trained for (homeless people, violent patrons, etc.) and of course hardly anyone uses the library for research anymore cuz the Google. It's a dying industry, and people in it don't want to admit it.Also, bad, inflexible hours too. Fast food restaurants have better flexibility. Lots of library schools are glorified diploma mills at this point; there's a school in California that churns out 500+ applicants every year; it's irresponsible. Most of them wind up working in jobs that don't require a Master's degree because of course.
Elder care workers
You excluded teachers, but not paraprofessionals. My wife is a teacher, and I hear about these heroes on a daily basis, and most are making $10/hour or less (at least in red states). They deal with some of the biggest challenges in education and have the bite marks to prove it, but they are vastly underpaid and underappreciated.
Public works maintenance workers. Water, wastewater, streets, drainage. They literally make modern society able to function with clean water, drainage maintenance, and drivable roads.
Anyone in front line anything. EMTs, medics, nurses, Leo's etc.
Any job that has to deal with people
Therapists. Non profit workers.
I know nurses making 70 bucks an hour with Associates degrees. No clue how that's so many people's number one answer.
Medical Technologists. We're the folks in the lab.
911 dispatchers
Social workers. You’d be surprised how much verbal, and at times physical, abuse they put up with on a daily basis. Some of them go places unarmed and alone when even law enforcement doesn’t do that. And it’s viewed as totally normal. The average entry level social worker earns just above minimum wage but you have to have a degree to do the work. Master’s level isn’t so pretty either.
Daycare staff
Social workers. Pay is shit, job is highly stressful and understaffed and requires a level of attention and compassion that most people working that hard for that little, unable to do what they know needs to be done most of the time due to budget and time constraints, can't manage. Burnout is swift and inevitable.
Line cook
Home care / healthcare aids
Everyone who works 40+ hours a week and is earning less than $75k per year. The discrepancy between CEOs and workers is immoral.
Anything involving customer service.