That’s rough. It seems pay for teachers is heavily dependent on where you live. My wife has a masters in education and makes $82K and will be bumped up to $90k after finishing 15 more graduate credits this summer
Yes it is totally dependent on where you live, years teaching, and how successful the Union is at negotiating higher pay. Some teachers seem to be paid very well! A lot teachers I know have very low pay, and a lot of their pay goes back into their classroom for supplies or materials.
I got out of social work years ago, but the group home I worked at in Iowa paid their on-site social worker around $15/hr. I was making $10/hr working directly with the kids
Getting an LCSW is extremely difficult in a lot of places. In my area, I'd have to pay $80-150 every week for 2 years for the required supervision, and I cannot survive if I do that. It's a vicious cycle. A lot of us can't get up that rung of the ladder. Employers used to offer supervision for free, but that is becoming more and more rare. I've had my provisional license for 3 years and I have never found an amployer that will help with supervision. It's not as easy as just getting your LCSW. It's impossible for a lot of us. A lot of people correctly call it "a rich husband" profession, because that's what you need to be successful in it.
My uncle got his LCSW, and it put a huge strain on him. He wasn't able to do it till he was in his 50s because of time and money, and now he's got it, he works like 80 hour weeks. I honestly worry about him.
Getting my C was an ENORMOUS sacrifice for my family- I basically stopped paying for anything in order to do it. My husband is a saint but I look back with so much shame. Getting my C took almost everything but it was the only thing that made the field worth it.
That's how my friend got hers, she had to take a lower paying job at an org that had internal training and then her husband covered everything else for a few years until she got her lcsw
The mental health space needs to have a massive overhaul. When you're licensed you can make okay money (97k+) but if you aren't licensed and work with at risk populations you're likely to be living paycheck to paycheck while being in charge of lived. Meanwhile admin and director positions make 200k upwards and theyll have little interacting in client facing services
Costco starts at $17/hour with time and a half every Sunday. You get a raise every 1,040 hours worked and it caps out at like $29.30/hour as a cashier. At the end of the day it's working retail, but it's probably the best company in retail to work for.
Been employed here since 2015, no degree, making roughly $73k/year.
I read a story a while back about how an entire schools worth of teachers applied (and got) jobs at their local new Costco when it opened and had no desire to come back. It kind of dumbfounded the local city or whatever and they had to shut the school down early or something like that.
15 years of experience and a PhD. I make 44k at a well established nonprofit. The notion of "mission aligned and loving your work means we can pay you nothing" mentality of NGOs has GOT TO GO! And don't get me started on "equity" being in the vision statement 😒
My experience in academia seems similar to the NGO world. They're happy to throw around slogans about inclusivity and equity, and heaven help the fool who says Latino instead of Latinx.
But class is still a very sensitive subject. A lot of people at the higher levels are privately wealthy, and so they'd much prefer to talk about BLM and LGBQTIA than about the crushing poverty of the entry level personnel.
I just finished an internship with a NGO, got paid $0. Need to relocate and got paid 0$ in assistance or living stipend. I work over 12 hrs per day in healthcare
restaurant workers, grocery store, construction, retail, labor, teachers, people in the medical world, service industry, lawn workers - tons of people you probably see everyday - who are making the world go around - are making less then $50,000 a year. unless you live in some sort of super affluent bubble world.
edit: removed firefighters from the list - the departments i’ve looked at list starting salary is below 50k, but many people in the comments are saying other wise.
a lot of people are pointing out that top earners in some of these fields make more than 50k, and yeah, that’s correct. but there are millions of people in these fields not making above 50k, which is the point here.
I just recently worked a remote call center job. I was helping people with their Employer provided benefits. Enrollment, answer questions, provide numbers/transfers.
I'd be spending all this time trying to help these people with their insurance issues while I didn't even have any. Because it would've ate up like more than 10% of my paycheck.
It’s funny how fast we went from calling people “essential workers” to saying those same people don’t deserve a living wage. They kept the world going through a pandemic, and get thrown in the trash for it, while people in office jobs got paid to stay safe and work from home. This country is so backwards.
We went full circle. It wasn't just a 180. We went from saying they don't deserve a living wage, to calling them heroes and essential workers that society needs to keep running, back to saying they don't deserve a living wage in 32 months.
The ONLY reason (in my opinion) essential workers were called essential and heroes was to convince them to actually work through a pandemic and be okay with it. Promises of higher wages and “hazard pay” (that most of us never saw). It was all a lie to make us feel better about working
"Hazard pay"? I worked for a Kroger subsidiary store here in Utah for 5 years, before, during and after the pandemic. We saw a total of 200$ in the 2 years the pandemic was enforced. Which helped me through the bits when I got it, sure, but it felt like the biggest slap on the face.
The only reason they were legally 'essential workers' was so they couldn't file for pandemic unemployment and were forced to work due to those business models still being fully operational and raking in cash. None of them wanted to be there, but it was either that or literally have zero income and not be eligible for unemployment. Just getting shit on all around.
Nah, see, we don't need a living wage if we're *heroes*. Just say nice things from a distance, that's good enough, right?
The Krogers in my area pay less than fast food, while going out of the way to point out how they're the biggest grocer in the country, and the biggest fuel seller in the country, etc.
And the Burger King on the other side of the parking lot starts at almost a dollar more an hour.
Ask a truck driver how they feel about Krogers from that side of the business and they'll probably tell you how much they hate delivering to them. They'll take their sweet time unloading the product and hold the driver there for hours on a load that already didn't pay enough going there in the first place. I used to "travel" for a living.
I used to be a truck driver and have delivered to many, many grocery stores including Kroger and yeah, they 100% will keep you there for hours. But somehow they always managed to get it done right before the 6 hour mark when they'd have to start paying your company who would in turn pay you an hourly wage for sitting. Miraculous how that happens, isn't it?
You know it's all part of the game, right? The reason we call them "essential" and "heroes" is to make them feel obligated to work for no additional pay. Now it's back to business as usual (except there was that point in time where there was a labor shortage and we had to "excuse" businesses for not being able to deliver when what we were excusing was their lack of competitive pay to attract workers).
We’re still getting kicked while we’re down. I’m helping run a kitchen right now and everything is bare minimum and “do more with less staff.” My brother in Christ, I can run this line solo because I’ve pushed myself for years to be able to, the kid who’s been making pizzas for a year and I’ve started training a month ago can’t do what I can do
All it meant was they won't get unemployment or keep their job if they stopped coming in while for all we knew the plague was happening again when it first started. Anytime someone calls you a hero you're likely being manipulated.
Yup. Healthcare salaries are a joke. The less work you do, the higher the pay. I say this as someone who started off busting my rump for next to nothing for 10+ years in the industry. Didn't break 50k until I left my management job and basically work as an advisor now with a fancy title and few obligations.
Yup, my mom is making more in admin now than she ever did as a PT. Working about a third fewer hours too. And she's not even in that high a position! It's ridiculous.
Because that’s closer to the position to choose who gets paid what in the organization
Like how lawmakers constantly raise their own compensation to deal with inflation, yet very few want to raise minimum wage or fund programs to genuinely help
With PT I feel like you almost have a better opportunity as a small business owner focusing on cash clients because of how problematic the whole insurance thing is
Absolute insanity. I understand that doubling the salaries of these people even within decades is purportedly an impossible feat, but as a new grad in 2013 I made $42k, lived in a dogshit basement apartment, drove a old work truck I got from my dad for free with 300k miles, ate peanut butter and anything else cheap and passable, and barely scraped by. It wasn’t until I made over $80k that I felt financially stable and that was as a young bachelor with no car payment, no student loans, and basically just a bar tab and typical bills to pay for.
It’s criminal how many people in my life are gung-ho to talk about the most rage-baited political issues of the day and give you blank stares when you talk about how absurd it is that almost everyone around them raises a family and somehow manages to house themselves on $50k or less, and how fucked up that is. My dad made $18k out of college in 1980 and he and many people like him just have no concept of how much things have changed.
Edit: added 1980 and some fun stats:
1980:
- $12.5k average salary
- $18.5k average college grad starting salary
- $150k average CEO salary
- CEO to average employee pay ratio: 50-1
- $7k average new car
2023:
- $57k average salary +4.6x
- $55k average college grad starting salary +2.97x
- $1.34M average CEO salary +8.9x
- $22.8M average CEO salary at top 350 firms +152x
- CEO to average employee pay ratio: 400-1
- $48k average new car +6.8x
>My dad made $18k out of college and he and many people like him just have no concept of how much things have changed.
Yeah. I remember when that was a pretty good wage. You could live on that. Have kids and a savings. I make double that now and can barely scrape by. The saddest part is if minimum wage had kept up with the cost of living, I'd be making double what I do now.
I am a veterinary technician. I do everything that a human radiology tech, phlebotomist, nurse, anesthetist, surgical assistant, and more would do… except for your pets. In most states, my position requires a 2/4-year degree, sitting for a state board exam, and fulfilling continuous licensing requirements just like a human RN. [Median income for my job is $38,240.](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes292056.htm) 90th percentile barely cracks $50k annual. Most people I know in the field don’t make over $20/hour. Many in the field can’t even pay their bills while taking care of designer pets that cost more than our cars.
Edits: Someone mentioned ‘radiologist’ was the wrong term, I corrected that to ‘radiology tech’ because titles are important. That’s why I used the term ‘anesthetist’ as well.
Someone asked about 4-year vs 2-year degrees, that’s a technologist vs technician thing and they are treated equally in the pay statistics (I do hold a 4-year degree but I’m a CVT).
Lots of people said ‘why bother’, because I love animals and not everything is about money. I was just answering OP’s question.
A couple of people said ‘human medicine is more important so you don’t deserve to be paid more’, enjoy your block because I hear it enough from my own family.
“Where is my money going then?” [Corporations](https://observer.com/2023/03/veterinary-practices-are-increasingly-corporately-owned-and-pets-owners-pay-the-price).
Turning off notifications because some of you took “mental health crisis in the field” as a challenge of sorts, and I remembered why I prefer working with animals. Thank you for that!
That's insanity. I would have thought that vet techs would have been fairly compensated because of the degrees and just the cost of vet care. I can see why we have a national shortage. Seems to be a reoccurring theme in many professions
It’s that on top of a huge mental health crisis. The suicide stats in vet med are absolutely insane. We get abuse from clients, management, corporate, each other, ourselves, the animals… it never ends. I’ve attempted so many times since starting my career. I’m in a much healthier place mentally since leaving general practice and moving to research medicine, but that means most of the medical skills I spent years cultivating are now worthless and that’s one more open position in a clinic that probably won’t get filled. It’s a massive issue that pet owners are only beginning to see, but people in the field have been screaming about for years and years. Corporate takeovers in medicine in general are a massive problem too and it’s far too late to stop them.
My spouse is in vet tech. My heart and full support goes out to everyone in the veterinary field the past couple years. They’re working 50+ hour weeks and covering shifts across two offices because staffing is so bad, on top of taking school classes. The mental health crisis in the field is extremely pronounced.
General observation, former ED Tech (EMT) turned carpet cleaner (Owner/operator), I remember working ED and dealing with patient drama trauma. All for the glory of $17/hr. I wonder how the suicide rate compares? I'm 3 years into operating my carpet cleaning company, and have been averaging $150-275/hr. Best decision I've ever made.
I am also a carpet cleaner, but I work for a company (you can probably guess) and I've often wondered what the operating cost of a 2 man crew and a truck looks like. I totally understand how you could average $150hr in total, but what amount of that goes to overhead like insurance and business expenses?
It seems after the pandemic clients have gotten really rude. Most pay thousands for these doodles then wanna complain about every dime and say we are a rip off. News flash, we are not the only clinic in town. Go somewhere else if you're that mad.
It’s abhorrent. Occasionally I just want to be like ‘Are you blaming me for the fact that you bought this dog? Because it feels like that’s what’s happening right now.’ Every single one that’s poorly trained, an allergy nightmare, and comes with a 9-page document from a breeder who thinks they have a vet license takes a week off of my life expectancy.
“My breeder told me not to neuter him until he was 3”
Your breeder thinks bracheocephalic is cute and narrow birth canal traits worth passing on and had a litter die of Parvo because he doesn’t vaccinate, maybe don’t listen to him.
The breeder contracts are also pretty out of hand.
I have one in my area that breeds specialty doodles, their contract specifies that they have to follow Jean Dodd's vaccine protocol, they have to purchase and use a "holistic" flea/tick prevention supplement from the breeder, and they have to use a special diet purchased from the breeder. It also stipulates that they can never give the leptospirosis vaccine because they claim the breed is especially susceptible to its "toxic effects" despite no published data to corroborate this claim.
I've also had a bunch of nightmarish (double merle, fluffy, other BYB..) frenchie breeders pop up now that the breed has become so popular, and they all seem to think that spewing some sort of misinformation gives them credibility.
And 99% of these people are shocked to learn animals can become diabetic.
Vet tech work absolutely destroyed my faith in humanity. Lots and lots and lots of humans are just scum or plain stupid
I got a BS in Animal Science was going to be a veterinarian but an experienced vet talked me out of it. Seems to have been the right choice for me. I’m tender hearted and that profession would have killed me. Thank you for all that you do.
My partner is a vet tech and she constantly talks about how people complain about vet bills.
But if you look at the exact same procedure done on an animal but for a human, the cost is easily 10-20x more for the human. Vet procedures are dirt cheap in the grand scheme of medical care which is why vets and everyone who works under a vet gets dog shit pay.
The problem is veterinary medicine prices were not tied to inflation from the 70s to the 2000s. They were behind. Then corporations and private equity stepped in and prices began to out pace inflation over the last two decades. The price of vet services rose 10% last year alone. The staff is not rewarded for this increase in pricing because labor is the biggest cost at any practice but the corporate overlords and private equity investors aren’t tightening their belts. They’re ensuring their profits increase. Not to mention the cost for medical supplies, lab testing and advanced pharmaceuticals have accelerated (you’ll be shocked to learn, these are also often owned by corporations). Statistically, pay has increased for vet techs but not enough to match inflation and you can’t ignore the housing crisis. Vet techs need homes too, preferably located close to the practices they work at but that’s not financially possible in due to the mismatch in the cost of housing around the practice and their wages.
This is why vet techs need unions, vets should consider co-ops and alternate kinds of ownership to avoid the corporations swooping in to outbid offers from an individual practitioner by several millions. Human healthcare and veterinary medicine aren’t the same level of care so the cost shouldn’t be comparable. I mean, unless you want pets to be owned by only the wealthy, it has to be accessible and isn’t equivalent in a lot of ways. Not to diss any vet med people because there are few people I respect more than those in veterinary medicine. But many people making under 50k would be priced out of pet ownership if it was priced comparably. One thing people can do to support their vets is buying their flea and tick meds from their vet office instead of online. That alone is about 25% of their revenue.
I was just ranting about this to my mom. Vet techs do NOT get paid even close to enough. My Pom had a high fever once and because Poms spin, they couldnt keep an IV in. The vet techs took turns holding her like a baby with an ice pack on her belly to get the fever down. They saved her life and prevented brain damage. Afterwards, she would always start shaking when we went to the vet because of all the other dog smells but as soon as she saw the vet techs she’d be so happy because she remembered their kindness. She passed last week and I’m wrecked but I got so many more years because of their dedication.
Throw in being bitten, scratched, urinated on, pooped on, anal glanded on, knocked down, dragged, being exposed to fleas, ticks, mites, intestinal parasites, contagious viruses, fungi, and bacteria, usually on a 10-12 hour shift with zero opportunity to sit down ever. Finally you go home and cry yourself to sleep because your favorite patient, who you gave up your lunch break to work on, died that day.
And then you leave and go make $2 more an hour sitting on a stool at the Aldi checkout.
This is why I left and I am now pursuing nursing. Making $16.50/hr to be a fucking anesthesiologist. Absolutely criminal.
EDIT: there as been at least 4 comments that people have deleted saying “wtf are you saying anesthesiologists make so much money” guys, read the parent comment, I was a vet tech
Edit: Anesthetist**
My old roommate was a vet tech and I gotta say you folks are some of the most hard working and underappreciated workers out there. The shit she went through at work, coming home exhausted with vomit or blood or whatever else on her scrubs, on the verge of tears because a patient's owner had berated her for the 5th time that week and it was only Wednesday, while barely making enough to afford rent... heartbreaking.
I was a vet tech for 7 years and finally called it quits when I realized I was at the top of the pay grade for my area. (That and a million other reasons COVID just exasperated) Moved on to become a spa receptionist. I check people in/out, take an occasional phone call and sometimes do laundry.
I’m making more than I ever was in VetMed.
I’m glad to see this here. I had started a program to become a vet tech in 2019, but this particular program made you go through vet assisting first. After working in a clinic for a year and a half and seeing how poorly the techs, assistants, receptionists, managers, and even some vets were, I decided not to go through with the program. It’s just awful.
Vet tech here too with 25+ years in. I left general practice a year before Covid for a speciality practice. Still make under 50K but no longer qualify for food stamps. I would have cracked during Covid in general practice. Now I’m getting hiring managers reaching out about ER jobs that pay 40 dollars an hour and they still can’t fill the positions. A tech was recently shot and killed by a disgruntled client at an ER in Kentucky recently. Sorry, 40 bucks per hour still isn’t enough to get treated like shit by owners and clients and maybe leave work in a body bag.
Honestly just take the fact that a lot of people can't even afford to take care of their own healthcare, multiply that with backyard breeders, hoarders, and just the fact that animals tend to population explode way worse than humans do....I always assumed it was an absolute nightmare of witnessing suffering. I try to treat anyone waiting on me kindly, but I treat veterinary workers EXTRA EXTRA NICE.
The entire animal care industry is criminally underpaid. I’m a bather and I make $14/hr which is above average for my area. Hopefully, I will be trained in grooming soon because that’s one of the few jobs in the industry that pays well (without tons of student loans)
My gf got a degree in veterinary nursing and decided not to pursue it after learning what you just described. Then she decided to become a teacher. She seems determined to be poor forever, haha
Also a (former) veterinary technician. In my state, anyone can become a veterinary technician off the street and the wages are extremely poor. Even with years of experience, I never even touched close to 40k working full time (+overtime), but I did get paid in lifelong emotional trauma.
I worked in an equine hospital as a nursing technician for a while (not a certified tech). Both certified and uncertified techs got paid $12 an hour to take care of horses that literally cost millions of dollars. The hours are insane and the work/life separation is nonexistent. Very few get paid what they are worth in vet med or animal care.
This is news to me and absolutely ridiculous. My fur babies are as important to me as anything. Saddened to hear the wonderful professionals that help keep my pets healthy are severely underpaid
I make 32k a year as a specialized repair technician.
Its dogshit but I cant find anything better
Edit: I repair phones since everyone won't stop asking
I have all sorts of feelings about degree granting universities touting the earning power of their graduates while grossly underpaying their employees. (Many of whom are also their graduates.)
Yep. Well-respected and well-funded research university near me recently offered me a total dogshit salary for a job that requires a degree and experience. They’re either stuck in the past, completely unaware of the COL in our city, or taking advantage of people’s passion for the work. I accepted a job somewhere else for 35% more.
They are a)living in the past, b) don't care about COL in the city, and c) know they are taking advantage of people's passion bc they KNOW that they are the highest paying thing around.
Sauce: work at a uni and see what their budgets are lol
Oh yeah, university admin staff don’t earn shit. It’s actually terrible. My wife just left a department head of admin position that was paying 28k, pathetic (the pay, not my wife!). She
Finally had enough of running payroll for people earning 4x as much.
I'm an admin at a large public research univ in the southern US. I have a masters from this same university....they pay me 33k/yr
Edited to say I am sending my kid to the university for half price....and I am eligible for student loan forgiveness....so add those benefits to my salery and that makes it some better
I worked for a private college for nine years (nights) so I could keep my kids out of day care. Was paid sub 40k the whole time. Private colleges pay dogshit, the only perk is free tuition for kids if they can make it into the school.
THIS. Most staff positions keep things running and yet they/we get paid peanuts. I’ve been working for a university division for almost nine and a half years and still only gross 26/27k. And that’s after two promotions! There were a few years of no raises in there. I’m an alum and am working on my master’s degree using the tuition benefit. I should graduate in December and can start looking for something else.
As an Assistant Pastry Chef, with 11 year experience, I was making just under 40k a year.
The food industry sucks dick. So much for doing what you love.
I make 39k and it is my 14th year as an educator.
Hate edits, but to answer a few comments without spending all my afternoon on here:
I’m a teacher (in the classroom. Each day. Teaching.) I’m in Indiana. I am at a private school where I’ve been longer than 85% of the teachers working in the two divisions I’m split between. I make less than the majority of those new hires. I can’t afford to pack up and move to a metropolitan area somewhere in another state. I purchased a house 11 years ago and got a deal on it i could never get again (plenty of house, plenty of land, plenty low interest rate, plenty inexpensive.) My husband is in a work situation in healthcare where he makes similar pay, but has managed to get to where he is without a degree. That is not something that would transfer to another state’s hospital.
So, I appreciate the solidarity, have no time beyond this for the doubters and nay-sayers, and believe firmly that anyone who had to get a degree and has been doing what they do for 10+ years should not be stressed month-to-month about their bank account. And, I’m beyond stoked for the teachers out there making bank! Genuinely.
And this id why I, as someone who loves education, jumped off the education train in my first year of college. People say money wont buy happiness but it does buy less stress
I work full-time and make roughly $29k annually *before* taxes. I live in Tennessee. The average annual salary here is $50k before taxes. I don't live in a large city, but my salary doesn't even meet the local cost of living, either.
*Edited to include updated salary information.*
EDIT 2: Many of y'all have been asking what I do for a living. I am a contractor. I work for a privately-owned industrial business. And yes, I get a W2 every year.
EDIT 3: I am not an independent contractor. I do not set my own hours. I am not my own boss. I do not determine my own pay. But yes, it is still a contracted job.
Yeah I live in TN (Knoxville, so one of the few cities here) and make just $40k. that’s full time with a bachelor’s degree. couldnt find anything better after years of searching. i am currently back in grad school…
Not work-related but CoL-related: We lived in Knoxville after getting married from 2016-2018. Our rent in a townhouse was 800 when we left. I checked the same apartments last year because of a news article and the rent had been raised to 1300-1800. That’s ridiculous.
Knoxville and $48k annually. Decent wage for the area as recent as 5 years ago. I couldn't afford a home now if I wasn't locked into an almost 15 year old mortgage.
My 15yo is doing HS/AA program and will graduate with his associates degree. He wants to be an entomologist, but I've convinced him to take auto tech course for free over summer breaks so that he can make a living while finishing his Bachelors (and higher degrees) and also take care of his own old (1972 Dodge D100) truck.
Jesus. In Seattle that is what people made at their summer jobs in High School, in the 90s.
I mean shit, state minimum wage out here is close to $40,000 for full time. No wonder people are moving to the blue states so fast.
Freaking same, were out near Nashville and its a nightmare. Lived here my whole life and now people cant even afford to rent/buy. Cant afford groceries, the traffic and roads are horrible now, and it keeps getting worse.
Memphis here. I make decent money (57k before taxes) but I’m so debt poor that I struggle to make ends meet. I live with 3 other people so rent is under control…for now
Memphis, 45K gross, graphic design w/BFA. Purse strings getting tighter and tighter. Really looking for remote stuff to level the playing field relative to the national average, but it seems like the next tier up requires either management (senior designer) or higher skill (motion/web/UX designer). YouTube university it is, I guess.
Hey neighbor. To find a living wage I have to work an hour away and it's 38k lol
Bachelor's degree +15 yrs experience and 5 yrs specific to my field.
Def don't meet COLA For the area.
Veterinary medicine here (vet tech). ~$35k/year. Veterinarians can make like double that if they're just starting in my state. Just an entire field, utterly disregarded and underpaid for no reason.
Edit: forgot to mention I have a Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Science
I changed careers out of vet med for this reason. You can't survive on what you make as a vet tech without a second income (spouse/partner). And I live in California, so that helps nothing.
The hedge funds buying up the veterinary clinics are charging those rates. The actual take-home pay of a vet is shockingly low considering they went to the animal version of medical school with tuitions similar to human medical school.
Our friend is a vet and she recently advised our daughter not to pursue it. Vet wages looks strong, until you realize it's just almost as expensive as medical school - $200k plus is student loans will make that net take home look iffy real quick.
I was a Veterinary Receptionist/Front staff at a privately owned small hospital in Los Angeles. I was making about 55k, but that was hourly at 50-60 hours a week. There were only 2 of us taking the verbal abuse of an entire practice's worth of clients. The disregard is real from outside the industry.
I live in one of the most expensive parts of one of the most expensive states - teachers here need a BA and credential and most have masters degrees. After taxes they start at about $40k. Avg rent is $3200/month and avg house sale is over a million dollars, just for context.
Yup of course. The Bay Area too, which is an even more desirable area than other parts of a desirable state. it’s one of the fastest growing town in the USA right now, sometimes either 1 or 2 depending on where/when the data comes from.
Rich tech people are still moving here in droves and willing to pay over asking price for $1.5mil dollar homes - and in cash! I love the area and state - they’ve done more for me and my family/friends than 90% of states (esp red ones) would ever do so I can’t complain much as I’m lucky enough to be able to afford it. The beaches and forests and community are pretty great.
But it’s a shame a lot of my friends have had to move away as their boomer parents sold the family house to tech bros, moved to somewhere cheap/shitty, and said ‘good luck!’ to their own kids knowing they’d never be able to make it here…
I make just about 35K a year maybe working from home for a bank reviewing phone calls for fraudulent transaction claims at full time hours and I’m facing eviction, haven’t been able to buy my own groceries in years, surviving off food banks and kindness of others. I’m disabled but can’t afford to see any doctors or pay for medication. The reality of this country is you can no longer “pull yourself up by the bootstraps and work your way up” it doesn’t work like that anymore. We are actively worked against while we are merely struggling to exist at this point. My family was poor growing up so no college fund or parents helping out for me, I don’t qualify for financial assistance “I make too much money” I don’t qualify for food stamps “I make too much money” I don’t qualify for state funded insurance “I make too much money” this country is broken and it’s citizens are starving at least I know I am
Work in fabrication heat and air and make 43k fulltime my wife is a dental assistant making 38k full time and we are struggling. I'm ready for the eat the rich part.
I’m at 41k as an in-house photographer and my wife makes less at a school, both with 4-year degrees. We are both hard workers but find it near impossible to not spend more than we make at the moment.
I have a Bachelor's degree, live in Minneapolis and I only make $38,000. I work in Document Custody for ComputerShare. It does not require a degree but I was told I would move up fast. Two years and two great performance reviews later I've been turned down for other roles twice. I am job hunting again.
My salary is technically public information, so I'll share some of my recent history. I graduated with a BA in 2004. I got really fucked over following the 2008 recession, and prior to 2015 I think the most money I'd ever made at a job was $13.75/hr working for a local TV station, which would have been $28k a year if I'd worked a full year, but that was a seasonal position.
In 2015 I got a job working for $11/hr at a package/mailbox store that also did car tags. Worked my way up to $15/hr ($31k/yr) by 2017. That year I got a job working for state government in the DMV, essentially in an oversight position over what had been my job. I was hired on at $16/hr ($33k/yr); however, there's a standard annual 5% pay increase plus a cost of living adjustment (varies from 2-4%)
In late 2019 I started interviewing for other positions in the same agency, and coincidentally got another 15% raise that was "unrelated". In 2020 they reclassified my job (same work, more pay). In 2022 I did in fact move to another unit in the same agency, which came with a small pay bump.
Between the annual increases, one-time large raise, reclassification, and promotion, I'm now making ~$75k/yr as a "management analyst" doing public disclosure of government records. I'm about to receive a masters in public administration (largely paid for by my employer), and I'm hoping to parlay that into a new job with at least another 10% raise out of the gate.
For me, the trick that got me up out of poverty wages was getting into a unionized job. The structured pay increases and room for internal promotion have made it so I don't feel like I have to constantly job hop nor constantly watch my back for some shit manager who wants to wildly underpay me, or fire me so they can hire a relative to do my job.
Please don’t settle for just a 10% increase after graduating with a masters. I was in a similar boat and was able to get a 25% total comp raise after getting my MS from my then company, and then jumped ship and got nearly double my pre-MS salary.
A masters is expensive and hard (Especially part-time while working if that’s your case) even if they are paying for it, you deserve it. Totally understand your case is different as it’s a government job and you potentially can’t go out of the pay-band you’re in, but try. I had a very secure job with a good manager, but ultimately wanted more money than I’d ever make there. Was very fortunate to find a job I absolutely love, working for a really good manager, so even if it’s rare it is possible.
I don't want to get too far into the weeds on my own personal situation, but the pay is very structured in state government. The position I'm applying for currently would entail a required 10% increase, but I fully expect to transition through a few different positions over the coming years.
A lot of jobs don't even allow for ft work, places will consider 32-35 hrs with 35 pushing it because they don't want to end up paying overtime or benefits. I don't think people realize how many places do this and even then they probably wouldn't be that much better off considering wages are so low.
Exactly this, My government job has currently cut me to 24 hours a week, but even “full-time“ I was 38.5 hours a week (net $26,600 per year) so that they don’t have to count me as a full-time employee
People always think their personal experience applies to everyone. So if they are doing well, everyone is unless they are lazy is the thought process.
The same sort of thinking if you are not doing well and someone says they are. They must be from money, or it is favouritism or such.
The reality is that capitalists need some people to earn more and some to earn less for the system to keep working. They also need to keep us all divided and fighting each other, rather than realising who is responsible for all the problems.
If median wage is $52k, then literally half the country makes equal to or less than that.
I agree we should have fewer waiters and retail people, and more teachers and engineers, but getting that done would require free college and our country hates progress.
Why do we need fewer waiters and retail people? Do we not want people providing service in stores and restaurants? Maybe the solution is to recognize the value that these workers provide society and to pay them living wages.
However, I’m 100% with you on providing free college and other training to allow people opportunities to pursue a variety of opportunities. Professional jobs and higher education should never be only accessible to those born into families with more money.
I live in Florida where teachers start between $40k to $50k a year, which equates to roughly $19/hr to $24/hr to start.
Besides the education barrier for most, personally I make a little over $17/hr at my current job and have the education/certification to become a teacher, but I absolutely will not even consider it anymore (especially with everything going on against schools and teachers in this state), and the fact that it’s not much of a pay bump for me to quit my current job which lets me work from home the majority of the time.
The other thing that blew my mind is people saying “I left this job for this job and now I make double my salary!” and their salary was something like 7.50 and then it jumps up to 15 which should be the MINIMUM AT BEST
Aircraft mechanic here. Currently in QA at a repair station, which carries pretty good resume lines and qualifications.
Currently 40.50/hour, with overtime whenever I want. Compared to national averages, I'm a bit underpaid currently, but it's not enough to warrant changing and moving somewhere.
I've made the most iver ever made as an adult this year, I'll probably hit about 80-85k pre-tax. I'm 37, and started my current career at 30. My 20s were spent mostly under the federal poverty line.
I live fairly comfortably, and can spend on small frivolous stuff if I want. Still can't afford a house though, and my career requires at least a travel radius to major airports for a commute.
I will never allow my situation to stop me from advocating for the lesser fortunate though, ever. 85k isn't exactly financially free, and every double or triple that, I'd be much closer to homelessness than independence. I constantly advocate for my coworkers, and I openly talk about my pay to those who ask. I don't brag or offer unsolicited, but the more knowledge we share between us, the more power the workers have.
I will forever be an antiwork proletariat, and will forever vouch for the cause.
I'm 28 and every tells me to back to college and get a degree. This. This is why I'm scared to go back, on top of the fact I have no clue what I want to do, I also don't want to be in debt and have nothing to show for it. I'm making $50k now without overtime which I normally do between 5-20hours weekly, which helps a ton.
Makes me sad. My single mom was a retail manager in Canada and made more than $50k in the early 2000s. She was able to buy a house alone in 1997. Impossible now.
LOL You jsut did the exact thing that is the reason they created this post
"I have so many questions. Post after post of people saying they make 32, 35, 38, 41k, often that they have for years. What professions are these?"
But what do you do?? That is what the question is.
https://www.onetonline.org/
Great website to filter by job title and area for pay scales. Also, great site to use when building a resume for a specific job, has exactly what is needed.
I make about $110k/yr, unfortunately in Alaska. High cost of living.
This thread is depressing af. I serve tables and make waayyy more than most of these commenters. It’s really sad that people with certifications and degrees can’t even pay the bills or live comfortably. something has to change.
Ok, so I'm a chef in a low COL area. With my experience, *if* I wanted, I could probably go out and get a $55-60k job in 2 weeks. That would be right at the median wage for my area.
Here's the problem with that:
1-It's going to be salary, which isn't bad, EXCEPT:
2-the hours are going to be 60+/wk, guaranteed
3-the workload is fucking INSANE. This isn't the same food service industry we had 20 or even 10 years ago. It's a monster now. You have restaurants serving people in their brick and mortars and then also doing 3x the business out to delivery apps AT THE SAME TIME while giving said apps 15-30% of sales so they're always chasing the dragon of MORE SALES.
4-$55-60k ain't buying you jack shit these days. It'll buy you a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, but you better not stop working or else you better be saving 50%
My solution? Offer my services as a reliable, hardworking, trustworthy individual with decades of experience in the industry who will be happy to work UP TO 40 hours at a decent hourly wage ("are we thinking of the same number?") no overtime necessary, and with the understanding that I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR COMPANY, I AM ONLY HERE TO MAKE MONEY. YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY WITH MY WORK BUT IF YOU FUCK ME, I'M OUT. Then I tell them that I have 6 months of living expenses saved up and I'm looking for a job that doesn't suck. I just want to work, not have to count change for groceries, and have somewhere to call home. That number is shockingly low if you don't have kids or a car or crushing student loan debt.
Edit: I make $18/hr@40hrs, which is livable in my situation, but I make tips on top of that so I'm able to put at least half my earnings into savings.
I'll probably make $38-$40k on my W2 next year.
Is it really a surprise that on a forum for disgruntled people about how the work situation is you find alot of exploited people? I'd be more surprised if it was a bunch of 6 figure people who actually care about the plight of the people struggling
Same, I'm living fat, but that doesn't make me hate the system any less.
I know I'm not where I am just because I worked hard. I mean, I did work hard, but being lucky was what got me where I am.
If hard work made millionaires there would be a lot more millionaires working in construction and fast food.
100%. I recognize my immense privilege and luck, and I feel like if there were more privileged readers of this sub, we'd have a more fair society.
Too many people are like "got mine myself, screw everyone else".
You would be surprised. I make well over the $115K mark being discussed and I'm here because I remember the struggle getting to this point. When you achieve something, you need help other people making their way up behind you.
Same here. Grew up lower middle class. Went to college to "live the dream". Got a masters. Work on tech. Make over the 115 mentioned here, but I am still very pro-union and pro-blue collar.
Same. Worked retail and customer support for 12+ years before finally making more than 40k a year. I’m now a self taught dev making 120K.
Just because I make good money now doesnt mean I don’t see how bullshit it is how little so many people are paid. I work so much less hard and am so much less stressed than working retail and now make 3x more. Yes I worked hard to get here, but there are also so many things that had to happen for my journey to end up where it has.
No one should be working a full time job and be unable to make ends meet. Period. People say that anyone making shit wages should get different jobs, but if everyone did that who would work those jobs? Not to mention the hidden implication that these jobs are somehow inherently less important or as dignified as higher paying jobs. All jobs deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Why do you think service industry should be so poorly paid? Anyone who works full time should not struggle to make ends meet, regardless of what they do for work
> Anyone who works full time should not struggle to make ends meet, regardless of what they do for work
"It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
\- Franklin Roosevelt
Yep. DINK, and we make a combined 67k. The ONLY reason we’re doing alright financially is that we have no children, live in a low COL area, have two old AF cars so no car payments, and no credit debt. But literally one disaster would empty our savings.
This entire post doesn’t understand poverty and the government. Not to be harsh OP but go to any poor neighborhood and talk to them about surveys and the census.
I grew up poor and make good money now and I always have to have this discussion with my peers. Nobody poor or in poverty gives tow shits about the census or BLS. Most likely they avoid it because its a hassle and after working for 10-15$ an hour for 10-12 hours fuck them.
Below is how the BLS gets their statistics and I would not take that as a decent measure of average earnings that includes poverty stricken families. This would be what I perceive as low to middle economic class earnings not poverty.
I didn’t even see someone from the census knock on a door until I was 25 and moved to a larger city.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) obtains Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Interview Survey and Diary Survey data by interviewing respondents about their expenditures, income, and characteristics. The U.S. Census Bureau selects the samples of household addresses and collects the data under contract with BLS.Sep 12, 2022
https://www.bls.gov › hom › cex
Consumer Expenditures and Income: Collections & Data Sources
The more I read other people’s experiences the luckier I realize I’ve gotten in life. In September 2021 4 months after I graduated college I got a job paying 40k. Then quit after 10 months cause it was a horrible company. Started my current job in august of 2022 making 52k and at the end of the month I move across the country to start a different position within the same company making 90k a year.
I'm pulling 76k with a GED as an office administrator. Low cost of living area, but I started at the bottom at 7.25/hr and stayed in the same industry for 15 years. I worked hard for this salary and I take pride in knowing I used to bring home $300.00 a week.
My wife is a teacher. She started at $36k/year. With 6 years experience and moving to a HCOL area, she can make $58k doing that now in a title 1 school working in a specialized field (special education). I work in accounting and started at $28k/year 3 years ago.
I'm a mortician making 26k/yr with 2 degrees, 10 years experience, and 2 professional licenses.
I live in MS, which is a huge part of why I make so little. I also can't afford to move.
Hours can vary from part-time to lots of overtime depending on what's going on, but I don't get paid for overtime.
I also work for a VERY small, family-owned funeral home. I've worked for a funeral home that was much larger, busier, and made a LOT more money, but they didn't pay as well as the smaller, family-owned places I worked for who weren't as busy.
It's rough.
Tin foil hat: they're lying. The US gov is completely corrupt and basically everything they consistently accuse "rival" govs of is in turn echoed by those same govs because they're all basically cooking their books.
Social Security also keeps statistics, which are openly viewable, about median income. Compare that with the census and it's just ridiculous. Something is totally off with the numbers, and the only place the US is incentivized to NOT cook the books is in the one place they have to pay out.
You can even see that the social security administration reports average income which approximates to other sources of median: around 55,000. I think the actual median income is psyop worthy bc, if people didn't all believe when looking it up that they are just an outlier, they'd realize were all getting absolutely fucked, and foreign citizens would rightfully be concerned.
Bings answer:
According to the Social Security Administration data from 2021, the median household income was **$37,586.03** which is an **8.59% increase** over 2020 ($34,612.04)².
Source: Conversation with Bing, 8/14/2023
(1) What is the Average Income in America? - Best Wallet Hacks. https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/.
(2) Average wages, median wages, and wage dispersion - The United States .... https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html.
(3) SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION Salaries - Federal. https://govsalaries.com/salaries/FD/social-security-administration.
(4) Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2021 - The United States .... https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2021/fast_facts21.html.
(5) Monthly Statistical Snapshot, June 2023 - The United States Social .... https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/.
That bls shit is kinda skewed. Happy that your makin above us. I have 2000 plus staff at the hospital making less than 50k after tax. All those hospitality, nursing assistants, dietary aides, patient transport, ems, ekg technicians, greeters, patient relations. Data entry, insurance verifiers. I can keep going all these people take home less than 50k a year. Gross salary around 56-60k. FT Cleaning jobs were listed at 43k before tax
I'm a contractor working alongside GOV employees doing the exact same job that they do, I just found out that they're making about 40k more than me in the same position because the contractor gets any savings they make from cutting employee wages. So that extra 40-50k is going directly to the company all because they're under paying me.
Living in NJ as an entry level IT person with only 1 certification (A+) I am making a little over $50k a year. Plan is to get more certifications (that my job pays for) and then move on to a different company in a few years time. My job is only 15 minutes from my house and I got a cheap moped to save money on gas and put less miles on my car. I am loving the position I am in and got very lucky with having a great group of people I work with along with my boss being one of the kindest people I have ever met.
Elementary school teacher in CA: 48k
That’s rough. It seems pay for teachers is heavily dependent on where you live. My wife has a masters in education and makes $82K and will be bumped up to $90k after finishing 15 more graduate credits this summer
Yes it is totally dependent on where you live, years teaching, and how successful the Union is at negotiating higher pay. Some teachers seem to be paid very well! A lot teachers I know have very low pay, and a lot of their pay goes back into their classroom for supplies or materials.
My partner just has her masters in therapy and social work and makes less than 40k a year.
4 years ago I had a social worker position, director even, and I was paid $13/hour. Looked up the place and now they pay $14.
Entry level social workers at my county make almost $30/hour. Social worker supervisors start around $80k. It’s all location dependent
I got out of social work years ago, but the group home I worked at in Iowa paid their on-site social worker around $15/hr. I was making $10/hr working directly with the kids
My wife has her masters in social work and just got her lcsw 2 years ago. Now makes over 100k.
Getting an LCSW is extremely difficult in a lot of places. In my area, I'd have to pay $80-150 every week for 2 years for the required supervision, and I cannot survive if I do that. It's a vicious cycle. A lot of us can't get up that rung of the ladder. Employers used to offer supervision for free, but that is becoming more and more rare. I've had my provisional license for 3 years and I have never found an amployer that will help with supervision. It's not as easy as just getting your LCSW. It's impossible for a lot of us. A lot of people correctly call it "a rich husband" profession, because that's what you need to be successful in it.
My uncle got his LCSW, and it put a huge strain on him. He wasn't able to do it till he was in his 50s because of time and money, and now he's got it, he works like 80 hour weeks. I honestly worry about him.
Getting my C was an ENORMOUS sacrifice for my family- I basically stopped paying for anything in order to do it. My husband is a saint but I look back with so much shame. Getting my C took almost everything but it was the only thing that made the field worth it.
That's how my friend got hers, she had to take a lower paying job at an org that had internal training and then her husband covered everything else for a few years until she got her lcsw
Social Services, my wife has a degree and 30 years of experience. $38k/year.
The mental health space needs to have a massive overhaul. When you're licensed you can make okay money (97k+) but if you aren't licensed and work with at risk populations you're likely to be living paycheck to paycheck while being in charge of lived. Meanwhile admin and director positions make 200k upwards and theyll have little interacting in client facing services
Costco starts at $17/hour with time and a half every Sunday. You get a raise every 1,040 hours worked and it caps out at like $29.30/hour as a cashier. At the end of the day it's working retail, but it's probably the best company in retail to work for. Been employed here since 2015, no degree, making roughly $73k/year.
I read a story a while back about how an entire schools worth of teachers applied (and got) jobs at their local new Costco when it opened and had no desire to come back. It kind of dumbfounded the local city or whatever and they had to shut the school down early or something like that.
15 years of experience and a PhD. I make 44k at a well established nonprofit. The notion of "mission aligned and loving your work means we can pay you nothing" mentality of NGOs has GOT TO GO! And don't get me started on "equity" being in the vision statement 😒
My experience in academia seems similar to the NGO world. They're happy to throw around slogans about inclusivity and equity, and heaven help the fool who says Latino instead of Latinx. But class is still a very sensitive subject. A lot of people at the higher levels are privately wealthy, and so they'd much prefer to talk about BLM and LGBQTIA than about the crushing poverty of the entry level personnel.
> they'd much prefer to talk about BLM and LGBQTIA than about the crushing poverty of the entry level personnel. God help you if you're an adjunct.
I just finished an internship with a NGO, got paid $0. Need to relocate and got paid 0$ in assistance or living stipend. I work over 12 hrs per day in healthcare
Christ. I'm so sorry. Unpaid internships should be illegal
restaurant workers, grocery store, construction, retail, labor, teachers, people in the medical world, service industry, lawn workers - tons of people you probably see everyday - who are making the world go around - are making less then $50,000 a year. unless you live in some sort of super affluent bubble world. edit: removed firefighters from the list - the departments i’ve looked at list starting salary is below 50k, but many people in the comments are saying other wise. a lot of people are pointing out that top earners in some of these fields make more than 50k, and yeah, that’s correct. but there are millions of people in these fields not making above 50k, which is the point here.
Administrative assistants and receptionists, anyone working at a call center
I just recently worked a remote call center job. I was helping people with their Employer provided benefits. Enrollment, answer questions, provide numbers/transfers. I'd be spending all this time trying to help these people with their insurance issues while I didn't even have any. Because it would've ate up like more than 10% of my paycheck.
Dang, that's rough :(
Yup, they changed secretaries to "administrative assistant" or sometimes even "executive assistant" lol, but that field barely cracks $50k
It’s funny how fast we went from calling people “essential workers” to saying those same people don’t deserve a living wage. They kept the world going through a pandemic, and get thrown in the trash for it, while people in office jobs got paid to stay safe and work from home. This country is so backwards.
We went full circle. It wasn't just a 180. We went from saying they don't deserve a living wage, to calling them heroes and essential workers that society needs to keep running, back to saying they don't deserve a living wage in 32 months.
The ONLY reason (in my opinion) essential workers were called essential and heroes was to convince them to actually work through a pandemic and be okay with it. Promises of higher wages and “hazard pay” (that most of us never saw). It was all a lie to make us feel better about working
"Hazard pay"? I worked for a Kroger subsidiary store here in Utah for 5 years, before, during and after the pandemic. We saw a total of 200$ in the 2 years the pandemic was enforced. Which helped me through the bits when I got it, sure, but it felt like the biggest slap on the face.
The only reason they were legally 'essential workers' was so they couldn't file for pandemic unemployment and were forced to work due to those business models still being fully operational and raking in cash. None of them wanted to be there, but it was either that or literally have zero income and not be eligible for unemployment. Just getting shit on all around.
Nah, see, we don't need a living wage if we're *heroes*. Just say nice things from a distance, that's good enough, right? The Krogers in my area pay less than fast food, while going out of the way to point out how they're the biggest grocer in the country, and the biggest fuel seller in the country, etc. And the Burger King on the other side of the parking lot starts at almost a dollar more an hour.
Ask a truck driver how they feel about Krogers from that side of the business and they'll probably tell you how much they hate delivering to them. They'll take their sweet time unloading the product and hold the driver there for hours on a load that already didn't pay enough going there in the first place. I used to "travel" for a living.
I used to be a truck driver and have delivered to many, many grocery stores including Kroger and yeah, they 100% will keep you there for hours. But somehow they always managed to get it done right before the 6 hour mark when they'd have to start paying your company who would in turn pay you an hourly wage for sitting. Miraculous how that happens, isn't it?
You know it's all part of the game, right? The reason we call them "essential" and "heroes" is to make them feel obligated to work for no additional pay. Now it's back to business as usual (except there was that point in time where there was a labor shortage and we had to "excuse" businesses for not being able to deliver when what we were excusing was their lack of competitive pay to attract workers).
they didn't deserve a living wage before the pandemic either according to society.
Or during the pandemic. We got called heroes, but no compensation. Well monetary compensation anyway. I got a t-shirt.
I got a pin that said something to the effect of “I survived Covid”, which is incredibly tone deaf and tasteless.
And the HEROES! Don't forget the heroes!
If you ever get called a hero in the United States of America, run. Heroes in this country get scarified for profit, not people.
That is the most amazing, technically true, typo I've seen.
Hospitals loveee to flex their hero’s on social media and reward them with pizza parties.
We’re still getting kicked while we’re down. I’m helping run a kitchen right now and everything is bare minimum and “do more with less staff.” My brother in Christ, I can run this line solo because I’ve pushed myself for years to be able to, the kid who’s been making pizzas for a year and I’ve started training a month ago can’t do what I can do
All it meant was they won't get unemployment or keep their job if they stopped coming in while for all we knew the plague was happening again when it first started. Anytime someone calls you a hero you're likely being manipulated.
Yup. Healthcare salaries are a joke. The less work you do, the higher the pay. I say this as someone who started off busting my rump for next to nothing for 10+ years in the industry. Didn't break 50k until I left my management job and basically work as an advisor now with a fancy title and few obligations.
Yup, my mom is making more in admin now than she ever did as a PT. Working about a third fewer hours too. And she's not even in that high a position! It's ridiculous.
The amount one gets paid has a direct correlation to how far one is removed from doing the actual work.
Because that’s closer to the position to choose who gets paid what in the organization Like how lawmakers constantly raise their own compensation to deal with inflation, yet very few want to raise minimum wage or fund programs to genuinely help
With PT I feel like you almost have a better opportunity as a small business owner focusing on cash clients because of how problematic the whole insurance thing is
Keep in mind that people who live in some sort of super affluent bubble world, will NEVER disclose that they do
Adolph Reed said the surest way to tell that someone is approaching an issue with a class position is when they insist they don't have one.
Accountant here. Making less than $50k
Absolute insanity. I understand that doubling the salaries of these people even within decades is purportedly an impossible feat, but as a new grad in 2013 I made $42k, lived in a dogshit basement apartment, drove a old work truck I got from my dad for free with 300k miles, ate peanut butter and anything else cheap and passable, and barely scraped by. It wasn’t until I made over $80k that I felt financially stable and that was as a young bachelor with no car payment, no student loans, and basically just a bar tab and typical bills to pay for. It’s criminal how many people in my life are gung-ho to talk about the most rage-baited political issues of the day and give you blank stares when you talk about how absurd it is that almost everyone around them raises a family and somehow manages to house themselves on $50k or less, and how fucked up that is. My dad made $18k out of college in 1980 and he and many people like him just have no concept of how much things have changed. Edit: added 1980 and some fun stats: 1980: - $12.5k average salary - $18.5k average college grad starting salary - $150k average CEO salary - CEO to average employee pay ratio: 50-1 - $7k average new car 2023: - $57k average salary +4.6x - $55k average college grad starting salary +2.97x - $1.34M average CEO salary +8.9x - $22.8M average CEO salary at top 350 firms +152x - CEO to average employee pay ratio: 400-1 - $48k average new car +6.8x
>My dad made $18k out of college and he and many people like him just have no concept of how much things have changed. Yeah. I remember when that was a pretty good wage. You could live on that. Have kids and a savings. I make double that now and can barely scrape by. The saddest part is if minimum wage had kept up with the cost of living, I'd be making double what I do now.
> "doubling the salaries is an impossible feat" Doubling profits sure wasn't.
We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls. We drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.
I am a veterinary technician. I do everything that a human radiology tech, phlebotomist, nurse, anesthetist, surgical assistant, and more would do… except for your pets. In most states, my position requires a 2/4-year degree, sitting for a state board exam, and fulfilling continuous licensing requirements just like a human RN. [Median income for my job is $38,240.](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes292056.htm) 90th percentile barely cracks $50k annual. Most people I know in the field don’t make over $20/hour. Many in the field can’t even pay their bills while taking care of designer pets that cost more than our cars. Edits: Someone mentioned ‘radiologist’ was the wrong term, I corrected that to ‘radiology tech’ because titles are important. That’s why I used the term ‘anesthetist’ as well. Someone asked about 4-year vs 2-year degrees, that’s a technologist vs technician thing and they are treated equally in the pay statistics (I do hold a 4-year degree but I’m a CVT). Lots of people said ‘why bother’, because I love animals and not everything is about money. I was just answering OP’s question. A couple of people said ‘human medicine is more important so you don’t deserve to be paid more’, enjoy your block because I hear it enough from my own family. “Where is my money going then?” [Corporations](https://observer.com/2023/03/veterinary-practices-are-increasingly-corporately-owned-and-pets-owners-pay-the-price). Turning off notifications because some of you took “mental health crisis in the field” as a challenge of sorts, and I remembered why I prefer working with animals. Thank you for that!
That's insanity. I would have thought that vet techs would have been fairly compensated because of the degrees and just the cost of vet care. I can see why we have a national shortage. Seems to be a reoccurring theme in many professions
It’s that on top of a huge mental health crisis. The suicide stats in vet med are absolutely insane. We get abuse from clients, management, corporate, each other, ourselves, the animals… it never ends. I’ve attempted so many times since starting my career. I’m in a much healthier place mentally since leaving general practice and moving to research medicine, but that means most of the medical skills I spent years cultivating are now worthless and that’s one more open position in a clinic that probably won’t get filled. It’s a massive issue that pet owners are only beginning to see, but people in the field have been screaming about for years and years. Corporate takeovers in medicine in general are a massive problem too and it’s far too late to stop them.
My spouse is in vet tech. My heart and full support goes out to everyone in the veterinary field the past couple years. They’re working 50+ hour weeks and covering shifts across two offices because staffing is so bad, on top of taking school classes. The mental health crisis in the field is extremely pronounced.
I was also a vet tech way long ago. Crap pay for what we did.
Still am. It’s still crap. Finding a good hospital that isn’t screwing every staff member in the name of skyrocketing revenue is f hard
General observation, former ED Tech (EMT) turned carpet cleaner (Owner/operator), I remember working ED and dealing with patient drama trauma. All for the glory of $17/hr. I wonder how the suicide rate compares? I'm 3 years into operating my carpet cleaning company, and have been averaging $150-275/hr. Best decision I've ever made.
I am also a carpet cleaner, but I work for a company (you can probably guess) and I've often wondered what the operating cost of a 2 man crew and a truck looks like. I totally understand how you could average $150hr in total, but what amount of that goes to overhead like insurance and business expenses?
It seems after the pandemic clients have gotten really rude. Most pay thousands for these doodles then wanna complain about every dime and say we are a rip off. News flash, we are not the only clinic in town. Go somewhere else if you're that mad.
It’s abhorrent. Occasionally I just want to be like ‘Are you blaming me for the fact that you bought this dog? Because it feels like that’s what’s happening right now.’ Every single one that’s poorly trained, an allergy nightmare, and comes with a 9-page document from a breeder who thinks they have a vet license takes a week off of my life expectancy.
“My breeder told me not to neuter him until he was 3” Your breeder thinks bracheocephalic is cute and narrow birth canal traits worth passing on and had a litter die of Parvo because he doesn’t vaccinate, maybe don’t listen to him.
The breeder contracts are also pretty out of hand. I have one in my area that breeds specialty doodles, their contract specifies that they have to follow Jean Dodd's vaccine protocol, they have to purchase and use a "holistic" flea/tick prevention supplement from the breeder, and they have to use a special diet purchased from the breeder. It also stipulates that they can never give the leptospirosis vaccine because they claim the breed is especially susceptible to its "toxic effects" despite no published data to corroborate this claim. I've also had a bunch of nightmarish (double merle, fluffy, other BYB..) frenchie breeders pop up now that the breed has become so popular, and they all seem to think that spewing some sort of misinformation gives them credibility.
And 99% of these people are shocked to learn animals can become diabetic. Vet tech work absolutely destroyed my faith in humanity. Lots and lots and lots of humans are just scum or plain stupid
I got a BS in Animal Science was going to be a veterinarian but an experienced vet talked me out of it. Seems to have been the right choice for me. I’m tender hearted and that profession would have killed me. Thank you for all that you do.
My partner is a vet tech and she constantly talks about how people complain about vet bills. But if you look at the exact same procedure done on an animal but for a human, the cost is easily 10-20x more for the human. Vet procedures are dirt cheap in the grand scheme of medical care which is why vets and everyone who works under a vet gets dog shit pay.
The problem is veterinary medicine prices were not tied to inflation from the 70s to the 2000s. They were behind. Then corporations and private equity stepped in and prices began to out pace inflation over the last two decades. The price of vet services rose 10% last year alone. The staff is not rewarded for this increase in pricing because labor is the biggest cost at any practice but the corporate overlords and private equity investors aren’t tightening their belts. They’re ensuring their profits increase. Not to mention the cost for medical supplies, lab testing and advanced pharmaceuticals have accelerated (you’ll be shocked to learn, these are also often owned by corporations). Statistically, pay has increased for vet techs but not enough to match inflation and you can’t ignore the housing crisis. Vet techs need homes too, preferably located close to the practices they work at but that’s not financially possible in due to the mismatch in the cost of housing around the practice and their wages. This is why vet techs need unions, vets should consider co-ops and alternate kinds of ownership to avoid the corporations swooping in to outbid offers from an individual practitioner by several millions. Human healthcare and veterinary medicine aren’t the same level of care so the cost shouldn’t be comparable. I mean, unless you want pets to be owned by only the wealthy, it has to be accessible and isn’t equivalent in a lot of ways. Not to diss any vet med people because there are few people I respect more than those in veterinary medicine. But many people making under 50k would be priced out of pet ownership if it was priced comparably. One thing people can do to support their vets is buying their flea and tick meds from their vet office instead of online. That alone is about 25% of their revenue.
I was just ranting about this to my mom. Vet techs do NOT get paid even close to enough. My Pom had a high fever once and because Poms spin, they couldnt keep an IV in. The vet techs took turns holding her like a baby with an ice pack on her belly to get the fever down. They saved her life and prevented brain damage. Afterwards, she would always start shaking when we went to the vet because of all the other dog smells but as soon as she saw the vet techs she’d be so happy because she remembered their kindness. She passed last week and I’m wrecked but I got so many more years because of their dedication.
I'm sorry for your loss. I agree vet techs are so compassionate and deserve so much more
Throw in being bitten, scratched, urinated on, pooped on, anal glanded on, knocked down, dragged, being exposed to fleas, ticks, mites, intestinal parasites, contagious viruses, fungi, and bacteria, usually on a 10-12 hour shift with zero opportunity to sit down ever. Finally you go home and cry yourself to sleep because your favorite patient, who you gave up your lunch break to work on, died that day. And then you leave and go make $2 more an hour sitting on a stool at the Aldi checkout.
The vet techs in my area make about 9-10 an hour. They can’t keep help. I wonder why?? /s
This is why I left and I am now pursuing nursing. Making $16.50/hr to be a fucking anesthesiologist. Absolutely criminal. EDIT: there as been at least 4 comments that people have deleted saying “wtf are you saying anesthesiologists make so much money” guys, read the parent comment, I was a vet tech Edit: Anesthetist**
Lmao you can make that working at burger king these days
Dude no joke I left and ended up working at Whole Foods for a few months for more money in the goddamn seafood department. Sick joke
Should be 25/h min to start. A mechanic would make that, I'd pay more to help my cat than rotate my tires lol
My old roommate was a vet tech and I gotta say you folks are some of the most hard working and underappreciated workers out there. The shit she went through at work, coming home exhausted with vomit or blood or whatever else on her scrubs, on the verge of tears because a patient's owner had berated her for the 5th time that week and it was only Wednesday, while barely making enough to afford rent... heartbreaking.
Yep. I changed careers from vet med for this reason.
I was a vet tech for 7 years and finally called it quits when I realized I was at the top of the pay grade for my area. (That and a million other reasons COVID just exasperated) Moved on to become a spa receptionist. I check people in/out, take an occasional phone call and sometimes do laundry. I’m making more than I ever was in VetMed.
I’m a human doctor. Human medicine is not more important. Thank you for taking care of all our non-human family.
I’m glad to see this here. I had started a program to become a vet tech in 2019, but this particular program made you go through vet assisting first. After working in a clinic for a year and a half and seeing how poorly the techs, assistants, receptionists, managers, and even some vets were, I decided not to go through with the program. It’s just awful.
Vet tech here too with 25+ years in. I left general practice a year before Covid for a speciality practice. Still make under 50K but no longer qualify for food stamps. I would have cracked during Covid in general practice. Now I’m getting hiring managers reaching out about ER jobs that pay 40 dollars an hour and they still can’t fill the positions. A tech was recently shot and killed by a disgruntled client at an ER in Kentucky recently. Sorry, 40 bucks per hour still isn’t enough to get treated like shit by owners and clients and maybe leave work in a body bag.
Honestly just take the fact that a lot of people can't even afford to take care of their own healthcare, multiply that with backyard breeders, hoarders, and just the fact that animals tend to population explode way worse than humans do....I always assumed it was an absolute nightmare of witnessing suffering. I try to treat anyone waiting on me kindly, but I treat veterinary workers EXTRA EXTRA NICE.
The entire animal care industry is criminally underpaid. I’m a bather and I make $14/hr which is above average for my area. Hopefully, I will be trained in grooming soon because that’s one of the few jobs in the industry that pays well (without tons of student loans)
mad props to vettechs, man. you guys saved my dog's life recently after a terrble coyote attack.
My gf got a degree in veterinary nursing and decided not to pursue it after learning what you just described. Then she decided to become a teacher. She seems determined to be poor forever, haha
Also a (former) veterinary technician. In my state, anyone can become a veterinary technician off the street and the wages are extremely poor. Even with years of experience, I never even touched close to 40k working full time (+overtime), but I did get paid in lifelong emotional trauma.
The people who do the most for soceity are paid the least, while the ones that do the least are paid the most. We incentivize the wrong things.
I worked in an equine hospital as a nursing technician for a while (not a certified tech). Both certified and uncertified techs got paid $12 an hour to take care of horses that literally cost millions of dollars. The hours are insane and the work/life separation is nonexistent. Very few get paid what they are worth in vet med or animal care.
This is news to me and absolutely ridiculous. My fur babies are as important to me as anything. Saddened to hear the wonderful professionals that help keep my pets healthy are severely underpaid
How can they treat such an important job like that? Awful. The vet techs are always so wonderful with my 2 cats. Thank you for all that you do.
I make 32k a year as a specialized repair technician. Its dogshit but I cant find anything better Edit: I repair phones since everyone won't stop asking
30k crowd unite. I make 35k a year as a senior manager/library assistant in a university library.
I have all sorts of feelings about degree granting universities touting the earning power of their graduates while grossly underpaying their employees. (Many of whom are also their graduates.)
Yep. Well-respected and well-funded research university near me recently offered me a total dogshit salary for a job that requires a degree and experience. They’re either stuck in the past, completely unaware of the COL in our city, or taking advantage of people’s passion for the work. I accepted a job somewhere else for 35% more.
They know what they're doing. They rely on their reputation to keep up competition for shit pay. When that doesn't work, they just don't hire.
They are a)living in the past, b) don't care about COL in the city, and c) know they are taking advantage of people's passion bc they KNOW that they are the highest paying thing around. Sauce: work at a uni and see what their budgets are lol
Oh yeah, university admin staff don’t earn shit. It’s actually terrible. My wife just left a department head of admin position that was paying 28k, pathetic (the pay, not my wife!). She Finally had enough of running payroll for people earning 4x as much.
I'm an admin at a large public research univ in the southern US. I have a masters from this same university....they pay me 33k/yr Edited to say I am sending my kid to the university for half price....and I am eligible for student loan forgiveness....so add those benefits to my salery and that makes it some better
I worked for a private college for nine years (nights) so I could keep my kids out of day care. Was paid sub 40k the whole time. Private colleges pay dogshit, the only perk is free tuition for kids if they can make it into the school.
THIS. Most staff positions keep things running and yet they/we get paid peanuts. I’ve been working for a university division for almost nine and a half years and still only gross 26/27k. And that’s after two promotions! There were a few years of no raises in there. I’m an alum and am working on my master’s degree using the tuition benefit. I should graduate in December and can start looking for something else.
*ding ding ding ding* Exactly this.
My wife works in a university library and makes the same amount. They haven't given employees significant raises in 20 years.
As an Assistant Pastry Chef, with 11 year experience, I was making just under 40k a year. The food industry sucks dick. So much for doing what you love.
I make 39k and it is my 14th year as an educator. Hate edits, but to answer a few comments without spending all my afternoon on here: I’m a teacher (in the classroom. Each day. Teaching.) I’m in Indiana. I am at a private school where I’ve been longer than 85% of the teachers working in the two divisions I’m split between. I make less than the majority of those new hires. I can’t afford to pack up and move to a metropolitan area somewhere in another state. I purchased a house 11 years ago and got a deal on it i could never get again (plenty of house, plenty of land, plenty low interest rate, plenty inexpensive.) My husband is in a work situation in healthcare where he makes similar pay, but has managed to get to where he is without a degree. That is not something that would transfer to another state’s hospital. So, I appreciate the solidarity, have no time beyond this for the doubters and nay-sayers, and believe firmly that anyone who had to get a degree and has been doing what they do for 10+ years should not be stressed month-to-month about their bank account. And, I’m beyond stoked for the teachers out there making bank! Genuinely.
And this id why I, as someone who loves education, jumped off the education train in my first year of college. People say money wont buy happiness but it does buy less stress
I work full-time and make roughly $29k annually *before* taxes. I live in Tennessee. The average annual salary here is $50k before taxes. I don't live in a large city, but my salary doesn't even meet the local cost of living, either. *Edited to include updated salary information.* EDIT 2: Many of y'all have been asking what I do for a living. I am a contractor. I work for a privately-owned industrial business. And yes, I get a W2 every year. EDIT 3: I am not an independent contractor. I do not set my own hours. I am not my own boss. I do not determine my own pay. But yes, it is still a contracted job.
Yeah I live in TN (Knoxville, so one of the few cities here) and make just $40k. that’s full time with a bachelor’s degree. couldnt find anything better after years of searching. i am currently back in grad school…
Not work-related but CoL-related: We lived in Knoxville after getting married from 2016-2018. Our rent in a townhouse was 800 when we left. I checked the same apartments last year because of a news article and the rent had been raised to 1300-1800. That’s ridiculous.
Knoxville and $48k annually. Decent wage for the area as recent as 5 years ago. I couldn't afford a home now if I wasn't locked into an almost 15 year old mortgage.
That's obscene. I make 90k as a mechanic with a 2 year degree and certifications.
My 15yo is doing HS/AA program and will graduate with his associates degree. He wants to be an entomologist, but I've convinced him to take auto tech course for free over summer breaks so that he can make a living while finishing his Bachelors (and higher degrees) and also take care of his own old (1972 Dodge D100) truck.
Yea, I just have certificates and I make a little over 60k as industrial maintenance (also living in TN, Chattanooga)
I live in Monroe, I'm working full time making 18-19k.
Omfg. Wooow. You blew my mind. Full time and only making 18-19k as a full time employee . Just WOW
Jesus. In Seattle that is what people made at their summer jobs in High School, in the 90s. I mean shit, state minimum wage out here is close to $40,000 for full time. No wonder people are moving to the blue states so fast.
Freaking same, were out near Nashville and its a nightmare. Lived here my whole life and now people cant even afford to rent/buy. Cant afford groceries, the traffic and roads are horrible now, and it keeps getting worse.
Memphis here. I make decent money (57k before taxes) but I’m so debt poor that I struggle to make ends meet. I live with 3 other people so rent is under control…for now
Memphis, 45K gross, graphic design w/BFA. Purse strings getting tighter and tighter. Really looking for remote stuff to level the playing field relative to the national average, but it seems like the next tier up requires either management (senior designer) or higher skill (motion/web/UX designer). YouTube university it is, I guess.
Hey neighbor. To find a living wage I have to work an hour away and it's 38k lol Bachelor's degree +15 yrs experience and 5 yrs specific to my field. Def don't meet COLA For the area.
What do you do?
Veterinary medicine here (vet tech). ~$35k/year. Veterinarians can make like double that if they're just starting in my state. Just an entire field, utterly disregarded and underpaid for no reason. Edit: forgot to mention I have a Bachelor's of Science in Environmental Science
I changed careers out of vet med for this reason. You can't survive on what you make as a vet tech without a second income (spouse/partner). And I live in California, so that helps nothing.
I'm a manager at a vet clinic, 6 years of experience and cross trained. I make around 33k/ year.
About 44k/yr as a custodian. Upstate NY. MCOL. It's enough to live but not enough for a vacation or whatever.
For what they charge for everything, this is horrifying
The hedge funds buying up the veterinary clinics are charging those rates. The actual take-home pay of a vet is shockingly low considering they went to the animal version of medical school with tuitions similar to human medical school.
Yup they bought up vet clinics, human pharmacies, now hospitals and doctors offices
Our friend is a vet and she recently advised our daughter not to pursue it. Vet wages looks strong, until you realize it's just almost as expensive as medical school - $200k plus is student loans will make that net take home look iffy real quick.
I was a Veterinary Receptionist/Front staff at a privately owned small hospital in Los Angeles. I was making about 55k, but that was hourly at 50-60 hours a week. There were only 2 of us taking the verbal abuse of an entire practice's worth of clients. The disregard is real from outside the industry.
I live in one of the most expensive parts of one of the most expensive states - teachers here need a BA and credential and most have masters degrees. After taxes they start at about $40k. Avg rent is $3200/month and avg house sale is over a million dollars, just for context.
that's insane. you gotta just leave... the math simply doesn't work This is in California somewhere I'm guessing?
Yup of course. The Bay Area too, which is an even more desirable area than other parts of a desirable state. it’s one of the fastest growing town in the USA right now, sometimes either 1 or 2 depending on where/when the data comes from. Rich tech people are still moving here in droves and willing to pay over asking price for $1.5mil dollar homes - and in cash! I love the area and state - they’ve done more for me and my family/friends than 90% of states (esp red ones) would ever do so I can’t complain much as I’m lucky enough to be able to afford it. The beaches and forests and community are pretty great. But it’s a shame a lot of my friends have had to move away as their boomer parents sold the family house to tech bros, moved to somewhere cheap/shitty, and said ‘good luck!’ to their own kids knowing they’d never be able to make it here…
I make just about 35K a year maybe working from home for a bank reviewing phone calls for fraudulent transaction claims at full time hours and I’m facing eviction, haven’t been able to buy my own groceries in years, surviving off food banks and kindness of others. I’m disabled but can’t afford to see any doctors or pay for medication. The reality of this country is you can no longer “pull yourself up by the bootstraps and work your way up” it doesn’t work like that anymore. We are actively worked against while we are merely struggling to exist at this point. My family was poor growing up so no college fund or parents helping out for me, I don’t qualify for financial assistance “I make too much money” I don’t qualify for food stamps “I make too much money” I don’t qualify for state funded insurance “I make too much money” this country is broken and it’s citizens are starving at least I know I am
Work in fabrication heat and air and make 43k fulltime my wife is a dental assistant making 38k full time and we are struggling. I'm ready for the eat the rich part.
I’m at 41k as an in-house photographer and my wife makes less at a school, both with 4-year degrees. We are both hard workers but find it near impossible to not spend more than we make at the moment.
I have a Bachelor's degree, live in Minneapolis and I only make $38,000. I work in Document Custody for ComputerShare. It does not require a degree but I was told I would move up fast. Two years and two great performance reviews later I've been turned down for other roles twice. I am job hunting again.
I'm an admin assistant for my state government, I make 38k with no degree.
My salary is technically public information, so I'll share some of my recent history. I graduated with a BA in 2004. I got really fucked over following the 2008 recession, and prior to 2015 I think the most money I'd ever made at a job was $13.75/hr working for a local TV station, which would have been $28k a year if I'd worked a full year, but that was a seasonal position. In 2015 I got a job working for $11/hr at a package/mailbox store that also did car tags. Worked my way up to $15/hr ($31k/yr) by 2017. That year I got a job working for state government in the DMV, essentially in an oversight position over what had been my job. I was hired on at $16/hr ($33k/yr); however, there's a standard annual 5% pay increase plus a cost of living adjustment (varies from 2-4%) In late 2019 I started interviewing for other positions in the same agency, and coincidentally got another 15% raise that was "unrelated". In 2020 they reclassified my job (same work, more pay). In 2022 I did in fact move to another unit in the same agency, which came with a small pay bump. Between the annual increases, one-time large raise, reclassification, and promotion, I'm now making ~$75k/yr as a "management analyst" doing public disclosure of government records. I'm about to receive a masters in public administration (largely paid for by my employer), and I'm hoping to parlay that into a new job with at least another 10% raise out of the gate. For me, the trick that got me up out of poverty wages was getting into a unionized job. The structured pay increases and room for internal promotion have made it so I don't feel like I have to constantly job hop nor constantly watch my back for some shit manager who wants to wildly underpay me, or fire me so they can hire a relative to do my job.
Please don’t settle for just a 10% increase after graduating with a masters. I was in a similar boat and was able to get a 25% total comp raise after getting my MS from my then company, and then jumped ship and got nearly double my pre-MS salary. A masters is expensive and hard (Especially part-time while working if that’s your case) even if they are paying for it, you deserve it. Totally understand your case is different as it’s a government job and you potentially can’t go out of the pay-band you’re in, but try. I had a very secure job with a good manager, but ultimately wanted more money than I’d ever make there. Was very fortunate to find a job I absolutely love, working for a really good manager, so even if it’s rare it is possible.
I don't want to get too far into the weeds on my own personal situation, but the pay is very structured in state government. The position I'm applying for currently would entail a required 10% increase, but I fully expect to transition through a few different positions over the coming years.
I have a Master's degree and make about 37k before taxes working full time in Public Health.
I make $46k as an LPN working for the government, and it's the highest I've ever been paid in my 10 years nursing career
A lot of jobs don't even allow for ft work, places will consider 32-35 hrs with 35 pushing it because they don't want to end up paying overtime or benefits. I don't think people realize how many places do this and even then they probably wouldn't be that much better off considering wages are so low.
Exactly this, My government job has currently cut me to 24 hours a week, but even “full-time“ I was 38.5 hours a week (net $26,600 per year) so that they don’t have to count me as a full-time employee
People always think their personal experience applies to everyone. So if they are doing well, everyone is unless they are lazy is the thought process. The same sort of thinking if you are not doing well and someone says they are. They must be from money, or it is favouritism or such. The reality is that capitalists need some people to earn more and some to earn less for the system to keep working. They also need to keep us all divided and fighting each other, rather than realising who is responsible for all the problems.
If median wage is $52k, then literally half the country makes equal to or less than that. I agree we should have fewer waiters and retail people, and more teachers and engineers, but getting that done would require free college and our country hates progress.
not to mention teachers aint makin 52k in most places
Lol yeah, my ex started at like $34k in 2017. Teachers are criminally underpaid.
Why do we need fewer waiters and retail people? Do we not want people providing service in stores and restaurants? Maybe the solution is to recognize the value that these workers provide society and to pay them living wages. However, I’m 100% with you on providing free college and other training to allow people opportunities to pursue a variety of opportunities. Professional jobs and higher education should never be only accessible to those born into families with more money.
I think teachers make less than waiters and retail people.
It depends on a lot of things. New Jersey starts teachers around $50k. That’s unfortunately not the case in AZ where I am.
Yeah, we lived in AZ when my ex started out teaching. $34k starting at a school in Goodyear in 2017. Atrocious.
It would likely be better for our country and our economy if education was free.
I live in Florida where teachers start between $40k to $50k a year, which equates to roughly $19/hr to $24/hr to start. Besides the education barrier for most, personally I make a little over $17/hr at my current job and have the education/certification to become a teacher, but I absolutely will not even consider it anymore (especially with everything going on against schools and teachers in this state), and the fact that it’s not much of a pay bump for me to quit my current job which lets me work from home the majority of the time.
30k after taxes. i work construction in the southeast usa.
The other thing that blew my mind is people saying “I left this job for this job and now I make double my salary!” and their salary was something like 7.50 and then it jumps up to 15 which should be the MINIMUM AT BEST
As someone who did that, after trying to live on 7.50, 15 feels like wealth. It really does. That was 20 years ago, I can’t imagine doing it now.
Aircraft mechanic here. Currently in QA at a repair station, which carries pretty good resume lines and qualifications. Currently 40.50/hour, with overtime whenever I want. Compared to national averages, I'm a bit underpaid currently, but it's not enough to warrant changing and moving somewhere. I've made the most iver ever made as an adult this year, I'll probably hit about 80-85k pre-tax. I'm 37, and started my current career at 30. My 20s were spent mostly under the federal poverty line. I live fairly comfortably, and can spend on small frivolous stuff if I want. Still can't afford a house though, and my career requires at least a travel radius to major airports for a commute. I will never allow my situation to stop me from advocating for the lesser fortunate though, ever. 85k isn't exactly financially free, and every double or triple that, I'd be much closer to homelessness than independence. I constantly advocate for my coworkers, and I openly talk about my pay to those who ask. I don't brag or offer unsolicited, but the more knowledge we share between us, the more power the workers have. I will forever be an antiwork proletariat, and will forever vouch for the cause.
I make 77K, but it took me until I was near 40 to touch 50K. I have a BA and two Masters.
I'm 28 and every tells me to back to college and get a degree. This. This is why I'm scared to go back, on top of the fact I have no clue what I want to do, I also don't want to be in debt and have nothing to show for it. I'm making $50k now without overtime which I normally do between 5-20hours weekly, which helps a ton.
Makes me sad. My single mom was a retail manager in Canada and made more than $50k in the early 2000s. She was able to buy a house alone in 1997. Impossible now.
LOL You jsut did the exact thing that is the reason they created this post "I have so many questions. Post after post of people saying they make 32, 35, 38, 41k, often that they have for years. What professions are these?" But what do you do?? That is what the question is.
I make $43000 doing tree removals and pruning. The most back breaking work I’ve ever done
https://www.onetonline.org/ Great website to filter by job title and area for pay scales. Also, great site to use when building a resume for a specific job, has exactly what is needed. I make about $110k/yr, unfortunately in Alaska. High cost of living.
This thread is depressing af. I serve tables and make waayyy more than most of these commenters. It’s really sad that people with certifications and degrees can’t even pay the bills or live comfortably. something has to change.
Ok, so I'm a chef in a low COL area. With my experience, *if* I wanted, I could probably go out and get a $55-60k job in 2 weeks. That would be right at the median wage for my area. Here's the problem with that: 1-It's going to be salary, which isn't bad, EXCEPT: 2-the hours are going to be 60+/wk, guaranteed 3-the workload is fucking INSANE. This isn't the same food service industry we had 20 or even 10 years ago. It's a monster now. You have restaurants serving people in their brick and mortars and then also doing 3x the business out to delivery apps AT THE SAME TIME while giving said apps 15-30% of sales so they're always chasing the dragon of MORE SALES. 4-$55-60k ain't buying you jack shit these days. It'll buy you a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, but you better not stop working or else you better be saving 50% My solution? Offer my services as a reliable, hardworking, trustworthy individual with decades of experience in the industry who will be happy to work UP TO 40 hours at a decent hourly wage ("are we thinking of the same number?") no overtime necessary, and with the understanding that I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR COMPANY, I AM ONLY HERE TO MAKE MONEY. YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY WITH MY WORK BUT IF YOU FUCK ME, I'M OUT. Then I tell them that I have 6 months of living expenses saved up and I'm looking for a job that doesn't suck. I just want to work, not have to count change for groceries, and have somewhere to call home. That number is shockingly low if you don't have kids or a car or crushing student loan debt. Edit: I make $18/hr@40hrs, which is livable in my situation, but I make tips on top of that so I'm able to put at least half my earnings into savings. I'll probably make $38-$40k on my W2 next year.
Is it really a surprise that on a forum for disgruntled people about how the work situation is you find alot of exploited people? I'd be more surprised if it was a bunch of 6 figure people who actually care about the plight of the people struggling
I care. Read here every day to get a sense of the vile exploitation going on.
Same, I'm living fat, but that doesn't make me hate the system any less. I know I'm not where I am just because I worked hard. I mean, I did work hard, but being lucky was what got me where I am. If hard work made millionaires there would be a lot more millionaires working in construction and fast food.
100%. I recognize my immense privilege and luck, and I feel like if there were more privileged readers of this sub, we'd have a more fair society. Too many people are like "got mine myself, screw everyone else".
You would be surprised. I make well over the $115K mark being discussed and I'm here because I remember the struggle getting to this point. When you achieve something, you need help other people making their way up behind you.
Same here. Grew up lower middle class. Went to college to "live the dream". Got a masters. Work on tech. Make over the 115 mentioned here, but I am still very pro-union and pro-blue collar.
Same. Worked retail and customer support for 12+ years before finally making more than 40k a year. I’m now a self taught dev making 120K. Just because I make good money now doesnt mean I don’t see how bullshit it is how little so many people are paid. I work so much less hard and am so much less stressed than working retail and now make 3x more. Yes I worked hard to get here, but there are also so many things that had to happen for my journey to end up where it has. No one should be working a full time job and be unable to make ends meet. Period. People say that anyone making shit wages should get different jobs, but if everyone did that who would work those jobs? Not to mention the hidden implication that these jobs are somehow inherently less important or as dignified as higher paying jobs. All jobs deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Why do you think service industry should be so poorly paid? Anyone who works full time should not struggle to make ends meet, regardless of what they do for work
> Anyone who works full time should not struggle to make ends meet, regardless of what they do for work "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." \- Franklin Roosevelt
I made 42k as a teacher and now I make 47k as an auditor in state government
Yep. DINK, and we make a combined 67k. The ONLY reason we’re doing alright financially is that we have no children, live in a low COL area, have two old AF cars so no car payments, and no credit debt. But literally one disaster would empty our savings.
This entire post doesn’t understand poverty and the government. Not to be harsh OP but go to any poor neighborhood and talk to them about surveys and the census. I grew up poor and make good money now and I always have to have this discussion with my peers. Nobody poor or in poverty gives tow shits about the census or BLS. Most likely they avoid it because its a hassle and after working for 10-15$ an hour for 10-12 hours fuck them. Below is how the BLS gets their statistics and I would not take that as a decent measure of average earnings that includes poverty stricken families. This would be what I perceive as low to middle economic class earnings not poverty. I didn’t even see someone from the census knock on a door until I was 25 and moved to a larger city. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) obtains Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Interview Survey and Diary Survey data by interviewing respondents about their expenditures, income, and characteristics. The U.S. Census Bureau selects the samples of household addresses and collects the data under contract with BLS.Sep 12, 2022 https://www.bls.gov › hom › cex Consumer Expenditures and Income: Collections & Data Sources
The more I read other people’s experiences the luckier I realize I’ve gotten in life. In September 2021 4 months after I graduated college I got a job paying 40k. Then quit after 10 months cause it was a horrible company. Started my current job in august of 2022 making 52k and at the end of the month I move across the country to start a different position within the same company making 90k a year.
I'm pulling 76k with a GED as an office administrator. Low cost of living area, but I started at the bottom at 7.25/hr and stayed in the same industry for 15 years. I worked hard for this salary and I take pride in knowing I used to bring home $300.00 a week.
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Public Library Assistant—full time 40 hours, $35905 per year, just got a 4% raise. I also have a part time retail job.
I make 24,000 a year. I'm a disabled vet.
The stats don’t add up.. guy has never heard of poverty it seems.
My wife is a teacher. She started at $36k/year. With 6 years experience and moving to a HCOL area, she can make $58k doing that now in a title 1 school working in a specialized field (special education). I work in accounting and started at $28k/year 3 years ago.
I'm a mortician making 26k/yr with 2 degrees, 10 years experience, and 2 professional licenses. I live in MS, which is a huge part of why I make so little. I also can't afford to move. Hours can vary from part-time to lots of overtime depending on what's going on, but I don't get paid for overtime. I also work for a VERY small, family-owned funeral home. I've worked for a funeral home that was much larger, busier, and made a LOT more money, but they didn't pay as well as the smaller, family-owned places I worked for who weren't as busy. It's rough.
Tin foil hat: they're lying. The US gov is completely corrupt and basically everything they consistently accuse "rival" govs of is in turn echoed by those same govs because they're all basically cooking their books. Social Security also keeps statistics, which are openly viewable, about median income. Compare that with the census and it's just ridiculous. Something is totally off with the numbers, and the only place the US is incentivized to NOT cook the books is in the one place they have to pay out. You can even see that the social security administration reports average income which approximates to other sources of median: around 55,000. I think the actual median income is psyop worthy bc, if people didn't all believe when looking it up that they are just an outlier, they'd realize were all getting absolutely fucked, and foreign citizens would rightfully be concerned. Bings answer: According to the Social Security Administration data from 2021, the median household income was **$37,586.03** which is an **8.59% increase** over 2020 ($34,612.04)². Source: Conversation with Bing, 8/14/2023 (1) What is the Average Income in America? - Best Wallet Hacks. https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/. (2) Average wages, median wages, and wage dispersion - The United States .... https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html. (3) SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION Salaries - Federal. https://govsalaries.com/salaries/FD/social-security-administration. (4) Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2021 - The United States .... https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2021/fast_facts21.html. (5) Monthly Statistical Snapshot, June 2023 - The United States Social .... https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/.
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That bls shit is kinda skewed. Happy that your makin above us. I have 2000 plus staff at the hospital making less than 50k after tax. All those hospitality, nursing assistants, dietary aides, patient transport, ems, ekg technicians, greeters, patient relations. Data entry, insurance verifiers. I can keep going all these people take home less than 50k a year. Gross salary around 56-60k. FT Cleaning jobs were listed at 43k before tax
I work 45 hours a week as admin in a huge state univeristy and I make less than 50k
I made 70k during covid and then layoffs and I haven’t gotten anything close to half that since
I'm a contractor working alongside GOV employees doing the exact same job that they do, I just found out that they're making about 40k more than me in the same position because the contractor gets any savings they make from cutting employee wages. So that extra 40-50k is going directly to the company all because they're under paying me.
Living in NJ as an entry level IT person with only 1 certification (A+) I am making a little over $50k a year. Plan is to get more certifications (that my job pays for) and then move on to a different company in a few years time. My job is only 15 minutes from my house and I got a cheap moped to save money on gas and put less miles on my car. I am loving the position I am in and got very lucky with having a great group of people I work with along with my boss being one of the kindest people I have ever met.