10 most underpaid and overpaid jobs in the U.S.

10 most underpaid and overpaid jobs in the U.S.

Skaitykim ir darykim isvadas besirinkdami karjera:

Ten most underpaid jobs in the U.S.

Commentary: Most require skill, courage and heart

By Chris Pummer, CBS MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) – Many Americans complain they’re not paid enough, but most of us are nowhere near as shortchanged as the country’s severely underpaid workers.

The degree to which someone is underpaid isn’t just a matter of how much money he or she earns: Two of the 10 jobs below pay more than the U.S. median of $37,500 a year. Rather, it’s a function of how valuable – or loathsome – the work is relative to the earnings.

Several jobs frequently cited as underpaid don’t make the list below for that reason.

To suggest elementary school teachers aren’t underpaid is to risk being branded "anti-education," but they earn $38,000 a year on average – the equivalent of $48,000 based on a full year – for a potentially fulfilling and enjoyable job.

The same holds for nurses, who are in fierce demand. While median income is about $49,000 for staff jobs, experienced RNs who scale back during child-rearing years can earn up to $40,000 a year or more working two 12-hour shifts a week. Not bad for part-time work with the flexibility to set your own hours.

Some underpaid jobs are just transitional. College teaching assistants ($12,665 a year) are the Sherpas who carry the load for tenured professors lecturing to auditorium classes, whose claim to fame may be a 20-year-old published text. They move on from there.

Stay-at-home parents earn nothing for all they contribute, including cooking, housekeeping, accounting, tutoring, chauffeuring and crisis intervention. It’s their household that ultimately is underpaid for the lifestyle choice they made.

The underpaid are more like the hospital and nursing-home assistants who serve meals to and encourage sick and old people to eat, help them to the bathroom and wipe them when not emptying bedpans, and extend a bit of humanity to those whom the medical system often treats antiseptically.

What follows is a list of 10 of the most underpaid jobs in the U.S., with salary and wage figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Salary.com. They are in no particular order, since one could argue any of these is the single-most underpaid:

10)Restaurant dishwashers ($7.25 an hour): The germs and bacteria these people are exposed to are scary enough to make a cat walk backwards up a wall hissing the whole time. The mountains of garbage they scrap off plates, the grease that permeates pores opened wide by steaming commercial dishwashers and the general thanklessness of the job make it horrible work at twice the pay.

9)Consumer Loan Collection Agents ($22,826): The financial-services industry enriches a lot of its employees, and then pays these people peanuts to lean on deadbeats. If they’ve got you on the line, don’t blame them for applying some pressure and unload a verbal assault on them. Blame the last zero-percent financing offer you bought hook, line and sinker.

8)Pest Controller ($24,120): In eradicating vermin from rats to cockroaches, they must crawl into the dark recesses that rodents inhabit, administer all manner of chemical "treatments" and retrieve rotting carcasses on their periodic service calls. We pay them a pittance to make the noises in the wall go away, and rid our kitchens of creepy crawlers we don’t want to admit to hosting.

7)Slaughterers and Meatpackers ($20,010): Unlike their often well-paid counterparts – unionized supermarket butchers – these heavy lifters of the meat-processing industry are doing the work that we never want to think about as we’re marinating our strip steaks or searing our baby backs on the grill.

6)Police Officers ($41,950): For all the strain the job puts on their psyches, cops don’t earn nearly enough, never mind that they’re always in harm’s way. We pay them to be society’s voice of authority, and then shy away from them. No man is an island – except for a police officer.

5)Substance Abuse Counselors ($31,300): This is the real missionary work of the social-service system, trying to rehabilitate lost souls. Many are former abusers who can’t find gainful work from suspicious employers and risk falling backward from being around dopers and drunks. They generally fail to save a population most of us have written off – including relatives and friends we’ve abandoned – but persevere for that one they’ll help recover.

4)Medical residents ($40,000): – These doctors in training work 60 to 100 hours a week – the equivalent of the dishwasher’s hourly wage. The medical industry skirts overtime laws because the pay is deemed a "stipend." Sure, they move on from four years of residency into six-figure jobs, but if we paid them more at this stage, maybe they wouldn’t feel so entitled and anxious for the hefty income awaiting them.

3)Funeral Home Attendants ($19,200) and Morgue Attendants ($26,167): They see dead people, in the flesh every day. They check in corpses and comfort grieving relatives in the most depressing work environment short of the front lines of a battlefield. A cancer ward is cheery by comparison.

2)Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics ($25,450): Down the road, their patients will be treated by well-compensated doctors if they survive; it’s these front-line medical experts who greatly enhance survival chances. Look for their pay to increase as overweight Baby Boomers discover their maintenance meds failing them in the damnedest of places.

1)Preschool Teacher ($21,907): Day-care workers ($19,900) are notoriously underpaid, but the real dishonor is paid to the preschool teachers who lead our three-and four-year-olds in ABCs and 123s in our vast, dual-income absence. Birth to age five are critical years in the development of a child’s personality and intelligence, yet we pay these people little more than we fork out for a babysitter on a Saturday night.

The vast majority of Americans would never consider doing these 10 jobs, either because of the poor pay or what’s involved. Still, in every case, they’re performing an indispensable service, and we all owe them a debt of gratitude for it.
Chris Pummer is an assistant managing editor for CBS MarketWatch in San Francisco.

Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S.
Commentary: If only such largesse flowed to all of us

By Chris Pummer, CBS.MarketWatch.com

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) – Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what we deserve.

"Fair compensation" is a relative term, yet HR consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive pay that can’t be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.

And while it’s easy to argue chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dried.

Corporate attorneys earn $500-plus an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocket a third of big personal-injury settlements, but local prosecutors and public defenders get paid little in comparison. Specialty surgeons may earn $1 million or more, while some family-practice doctors are hard-pressed to pay off medical-school loans.

Hollywood stars making $20 million a movie or $10 million per TV-season qualify for many people’s overpaid list. But for every one of those actors and actresses, there are a thousand waiting tables and taking bit movie parts or regional theater roles awaiting a big break that never comes. Join the "Shades of Green" discussion.

"A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don’t want screwed up," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. "You wouldn’t want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot or hire a cheap wedding photographer to record an event you hope happens once in your lifetime.

"With pro athletes, one owner is willing to pay big money for a star player and then all the other players want to keep up with the Joneses," Coleman said. "The art with CEO pay is making sure your CEO is above the median – and you see where that goes."

What follows is a list of the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S., in reverse order, drafted with input from compensation experts:

  1. Wedding photographers

Photographers earn a national average of $1,900 for a wedding, though many charge $2,500 to $5,000 for a one-day shoot, client meeting and processing time that runs up to 20 hours or more, and the cost of materials.

The overpaid ones are the many who admit they only do weddings for the income, while quietly complaining about the hassle of dealing with hysterical brides and drunken reception guests. They mope through the job with the attitude: "I’m just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls."

Much of their work is mediocre as a result. How often have you really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Photographers who long for the day they can say "I don’t do weddings" should leave the work to the dedicated ones who do.

  1. Major airline pilots

While American and United pilots recently took pay cuts, senior captains earn as much as $250,000 a year at Delta, and their counterparts at other major airlines still earn about $150,000 to $215,000 - several times pilot pay at regional carriers - for a job that technology has made almost fully automated.

By comparison, senior pilots make up to 40 percent less at low-fare carriers like Jet Blue and Southwest, though some enjoy favorable perks like stock options. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

The pilot’s unions are the most powerful in the industry. They demand premium pay as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. In what amounts to a per-passenger commission, the larger the plane, the more they earn - even though it takes little more skill to pilot a jumbo jet. It’s as much the airplane mechanics who hold our fate in their hands.

  1. West Coast longshoremen

In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen’s union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn’t demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.

Next year, West Coast dockworkers will earn an average of $112,000 for handling cargo, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, their employer. Office clerks who log shipping records into computers will earn $136,000. And unionized foremen who oversee the rank-and-file will pull down an average $177,000.

Unlike their East Coast union brethren who compete with non-union ports in the South and Gulf of Mexico, the West Coast stevedores have an ironfisted lock on Pacific ports. Given their rare monopoly, they can disrupt U.S. commerce – as they did during the FDR years – and command exorbitant wages, even though their work is more automated and less hazardous than in the days of "On the Waterfront."

  1. Skycaps at major airports

Many of the uniformed baggage handlers who check in luggage at curbside at the busiest metro airports pull in $70,000 to $100,000 a year – most of it in cash.

On top of their salaries, peak earners can take in $300 or more a day in tips. Sound implausible? That amounts to a $2 tip from 18 travelers an hour on average. Many tip more than that.

While most skycaps are cordial, a good many treat customers with blank indifference, knowing harried travelers don’t want to brave counter check-ins, especially in the post 9/11 age.

  1. Real estate agents selling high-end homes

Anyone who puts in a little effort can pass the test to get a real estate agent’s license, which makes the vast sums that luxury-home agents earn stupefying.

While most agents hustle tail to earn $60,000 a year, those in affluent areas can pull down $200,000-plus for half the effort, courtesy of the fatter commissions on pricier listings.

Luxury home agents live off the economy’s fat, yet many put on airs as if they’re members of the class whose homes they’re selling, and eye underdressed open-house visitors as if they’re casing the joint.

  1. Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on the lecture circuit

Whether it’s for knighted ex-Mayor Rudy Guiliani or Tom "In Search of Excellence" Peters, corporate trade groups pay astronomical sums to celebrity-types and political has-beens to address their convention audiences.

Former President Reagan raised the bar back in 1989 when he took $2 million from Japanese business groups for making two speeches. Bill Clinton earned $9.5 million on 60 speeches last year, though most of those earnings went to charity and to fund his presidential library.

The national convention circuit’s shame is that it blows trade-group members’ money on orators whose speeches often have been warmed over a dozen times.

  1. Orthodontists

For a 35-hour workweek, orthodontists earn a median $350,000 a year, according to the Journal of Clinical Orthodontics. General dentists, meanwhile, earn about half as much working 39 hours a week on average, in a much dirtier job.

The difference in their training isn’t like that of a heart surgeon vs. a family-practice doctor. It’s a mere two years, and a vastly rewarding investment if you’re among the chosen: U.S. dental schools have long been criticized for keeping orthodontists in artificially low supply to keep their income up.

This isn’t brain surgery: Orthodontists simply manipulate teeth in a growing child’s mouth – and often leave adjustment work to assistants whose handiwork they merely sign off on. What makes their windfall egregious is that they stick parents with most of the inflated bill, since orthodontia insurance benefits cover nowhere near as large a percentage as for general dentistry.

  1. CEOs of poorly performing companies

Most U.S. chief executives are vastly overpaid, but if their company is rewarding shareholders and employees, producing quality products of good value and being a responsible corporate citizen, it’s hard to take issue with their compensation.

CEOs at chronically unprofitable companies and those forever lagging industry peers stand as the most grossly overpaid. Most know they should resign – in shareholders’ and employees’ interest – but they survive because corporate boards that oversee them remain stacked with friends and family members.

The ultimate excess comes after they’re finally forced out, usually by insiders tired of seeing their own stock holdings plummet. These long-time losers draw multimillion-dollar severance packages as a reward for their failed stewardship.

  1. Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts

Pro athletes at the top of their game deserve what they earn for being the best in their business. It’s those who sign whopping, long-term contracts after a few strong years, and then find their talents vanish, who reap unconscionable sums of money.

NBA player Shawn Kemp, for instance, earned $10 million in a year he averaged a pathetic 6.1 points and 3.8 rebounds a game. Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Hampton earned $9.5 million – in the second year of an eight-year, $121 million contract – while compiling a 7-15 won-loss record for the Colorado Rockies with a pitiful earned-run average of 6.15.

Thank the players’ unions for refusing to negotiate contracts based on performance – and driving up the cost of tickets to levels unaffordable for a family of four, especially for football and basketball. They point to owners as the culprits, yet golf star Tiger Woods and tennis champ Serena Williams earn their keep based on their performance in each tournament.

  1. Mutual-fund managers

Everyone on Wall Street makes far too much for the backbreaking work of moving money around, but mutual fund managers are emerging as among the most reprehensible.

This isn’t kicking 'em when they’re down, given the growing fund-industry scandal. They’ve been long overpaid. Stock-fund managers can easily earn $500,000 to $1 million a year including bonuses – even though only 3 in 10 beat the market in the last 10 years.

Now we discover an untold number enriched themselves and favored clients with illegally timed trades of fund shares. That’s a worse betrayal of trust than the corporate scandals of recent years, since they’re supposed to be on the little person’s side.

Put aside what fund managers earn and consider their bosses. Putnam’s ex-CEO Lawrence J. Lasser’s income rivals the bloated pay package that sparked New York Stock Exchange President pimp… Grasso’s ouster. Lasser’s take: An estimated total of $163 million over the last five years.

If only we were all so fortunate.
Chris Pummer is personal finance editor for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.

Nera teisybes sitam pasaulyje Juokiasi

tai ir ira Capitalizmas to norejo ta ir turi nx tos straipsnius rasinet o rasineja tie kurie neuzdirba nes tas kur making money jis niekas nesakis kad i am overpayd Juokiasi
kas lecia teachers tai tikrai nedaug uzdirba ,

Idomus straipsniai, Custom. Aciu, kad pasidalinai Gerai Taip
Alus Alus

Man irgi patiko. Taip Taip. Dekui Mirkt

Neblogi straipsniai, bet del kai kuriu nesutinku:

Underpaid:
10) dishwasher - reikejo galvot kai mete high school ir pradejo vartoti crack cocaine Kietas Juk visi zino kad ta darba dirba tik narkomanai ir nelegalai Kiaulė
5)Substance Abuse Counselors (uzdirba 2x daugiau nei dishwasher) - nebloga paskata mesti crack cocaine Cha cha (daugumas tu councelor buve narkomanai, kurie pries tai dirbo dishwasheriais, o dar anksciau mete mokykla)
4)Medical residents ($40,000) - per aspera ad astra ar kaip ten romenai sake. Paskui uzdirba $300,000 and up, darydami liposuction. (Pats maciau convertible Rolls-Royce Corniche, kaina ~ $500,000 Apakęs , vanity plate - DRLIPO Mirkt )

Del overpaid -
10) wedding photographers tiek nuzdirbtu, jei nebutu kas jiem tiek moka. Jei zmones savanoriskai lenda i skolas kad padarytu $50000 vestuves o po to skiriasi anksciau nei atiduoda skolas - tai patys kvailiai.
9) Major airline pilots - kai ash skrendu lektuvu, man noretusi zinoti kad tai ne discount price pilotas Šypsena Kad uztikrinti atranka, reik kad moketu zymiai daugiau nei dishwasheriams, ir tai yra gerai.
5) Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on the lecture circuit - velgi zmones patys idiotai kad jiems moka. Netgi M. Gorbaciovas buvo "on the lecture circuit" Nuobodesnio kalbetojo paieskot reiktu.
2) Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts - washed up ar ne jei jie randa vadybininku-asilu kurie sudaro tokius kontraktus - good for them.

  1. Mutual-fund managers - ar noretumet kad uz jusu pinigus butu atsakingas nuo algos iki algos gyvenatis zmogus? Kai daug uzdirba, turi daug kuo ir rizikuoti - uz prasizengimus manageriai daznai baudziami desimtimis mln $

O shitus tai reiktu teisti:
8) West Coast longshoremen
3) CEOs of poorly performing companies

gal i valstybine kalba isverstum…

gal dar siusiuka uz tave padaryti ir po to kugelio tau iskept???Juokiasi

Na tai nieko baisaus,kolega,kad nesutinki-is to ir atsiranda diskusijosNekaltas

Del tu mutual funds manageriu-kiek man zinoma, kompanija gali nubausti,o ne manageriNekaltas
Isskyrus tuos atvejus,kai jis nesvariais darbeliais uzsiimineja apie savo,o ne klientu pinigine galvodamas.Atsakomybe cia lyg ir ne prie ko,greiciau zmogiskas silpnumasNekaltas

Kartais ir be managerio graziu dalyku nutinka-stai neseniai asmeniskai teko susidurti su atveju nedidelej Chicagos investicinej kompanijoj,kai eilinis finansininkas,matyt labai gabiu "traderiu"pasijautes be vyresnybes zinios per viena nakti "pratreidino" $2mil kompanijos pinigu ir nuvare ja i bankrotaApakęs

Mazdaug tai mano supratimu ir norejo pasakyt straipsnio autorius-mutual funds manageriu itaka ir naudingumas yra labiausiai ispustas ir pervertintas skaiciaisNekaltas

Del kiekvienos sekancios pozicijos irgi galima gincytis,kiek imanomaNekaltas
(medikas medikui juk irgi nelygus- family doctor biednoj comunity hospital tikrai RR "barankos" nesukineja-bet dar klausimas ar jis blogesnis medicinos specialistas uz riebalu nusiurbinetoja)

Paprastai vengiu skaiciuoti svetimus pinigus,bet sikart pirmiausia mintis , perskaicius straipsnius, man asmeniskai buvo siek tiek "gruzinanti":

"Velnias-juk absurdo regis ir U.S. uztenka-salyje,kur oficialiai taip vertinamas ir aukstinamas issilavinimas,zinios ir tobuleti linkusi asmenybe,airportu neshikai pasirodo irgi visai oficialiai uzdirba kelis kart daugiau nei mokytojai"Apakęs

JuokiasiJuokiasiJuokiasi

GeraiJuokiasi

I Europos Sajunga vadinasi zmones eina Nekaltas

is kur jau cia krutas toks jankiu kalba ismanydamas? o straipsnis idomus

jo, man irgi labai krito i aki aerouosto darbininku pajamos… varysiu ten dirbti. jeigu kas priims…! Šypsena

jei priims, gali tekt neilgai dziaugtis… AA tik pafailino bankrupt protection…

rimaragana - Juokauji del airline darbo, ane? Apakęs Apakęs Jetus, ten yra UNDERPAID UNDERPAID - (patyrimas sneka Kietas) danai - Kiba norejai sakyt ATA? Girdejau, kad American Trans Air Chapter 11 (dar ne Chapter 13, kur visi tada atleisti)… Nekaltas O Delta irgi netoliese bus Chapter 11… United grasina atleist 6,000 darbininkus… Mano buvusi avialinija ka tik siandien pranese, kad atleis 100 mechaniku… Va tai - pries 20 metu - net pries 10 metu - buvo dream job… Drovus

juokauju, juokauju! turiu as darba (bent kolkas)! Mirkt

Reikejo man si straipsniuka paskaityti kai rinkausi kur stoti po vidurines Cha chadabar jau pervelu!

Geras straipsnis Gerai

Jau atejom… Nekaltas