That not all jobs are equal

[Jobqualifications]

There’s often a lot of heightened emotions about salaries on here, where low wages jobs are equally, if not harder work than high paying jobs.
What do people think makes a high paid job? Why do people seem to resent them?
I’ve been a SAHM, and for me that was my hardest job ever….predominantly out of boredom and monotony.

Farmers have guns, and use them when needed.

Certainly it's better to have a very to tend for them, I would never say otherwise, but it's not keeping society afloat in the way many of the lowest paid jobs do. If people weren't aware of that already, COVID certainly highlighted it.

Society wouldn't collapse if we suddenly had no vets. If people couldn't get their shopping, there would be huge problems. You can disagree if you like, but I'm not wrong.

There are many, many jobs that are really tough, that aren't compensated properly, many of them those traditionally considered "woman's work" like nursing, teaching and social work.

Each of those jobs comes with huge responsibility, skill and mental load, far beyond what a lot of senior managers in non caring roles could handle IMO. But are not compensated properly as they are absolutely taken for granted.

You're utterly naive if you think higher salary = higher mental load. Perhaps within some sectors that's true if you look at the jobs at the top Vs other jobs in the same sector. But it's not true for every sector, nor if you compare difference sectors, necessarily.

I completely agree with @DoAWheelie. it’s capitalism.

@Meadowfinch is also correct.

A good example is how much better doctors are paid in the private sector or other countries. Many doctors make life or death decisions on a daily basis, an error in surgery can be catastrophic. Training is intense. I’d say that that level of responsibility would merit some of the highest pay, but it’s not (at least in the NHS) because our healthcare system isn’t based around profit. (I don’t think NHS doctors are destitute)

I work for a not for profit, the same job in the private sector would pay a lot more. Because of money.

I agree with others it’s about profit.

I worked in retail/logistics and climbed the ladder there for 8 years until I was director of a warehouse. Unbelievable amounts of slog at every level. Constantly being on call. Shit pay for the level of responsibility. Oversaw the management of 250 employees. Responsible for everything from H+S, recruitment, HR, payroll, operations, customer service… But it’s well-known that these warehouses turn barely any profit.

Recently made the jump to the corporate world (with only the skills picked up in logistics) for a company that makes a tonne of profit. I make more money. I manage no one. I work my hours. I’m never stressed. In my role I’ve saved over £100,000 so far in contracts (which was incredibly easy to do) and get treated like a hero. By far the easiest job I have ever had, far more so than when I started on a till in retail. And although I’ve carried over previous skills, honestly the work isn’t highly skilled at all. I just make them a lot of money.

We live in a society that values things weirdly. Doubt it will change.

Seems ridiculous to me that a cleaner cleaning up house or school rubbish and putting it into wheelie bins is on minimum wage but the council guy emptying that same wheelie bin into the bin lorry is on a higher average wage.

Why? He's not driving it. He's not lifting anything heavy. He's not in danger due to broken glass nowadays the way it used to be lifting binbags and chucking them into the lorry (although rats are dangerous but they could be around the bins the lady is out at too)

Only thing I can think of is that he is a man. A full time working man. And they have always been paid more than part time women.

And as someone said earlier, if it's based on how difficult you are to replace, it's easier to replace a cleaner as it's work which can be done whenever by mums during the school day. But it's harder to replace a full time bin worker in a job that must be done regularly and may be outwith school hours as full time.

Some jobs that are fairly well paid do require a high lebel of skill and/or knowledge, but the acquisition of this knowledge/ skill usually comes about from being from a wealthier and/or more stable background to begin with..

Then when you look across the whole of the economy, so outside of medicine etc, you see that overall, how hard someone works and the value of what they contribute is in no way proportionate to their pay. A lot of it is in fact skewed by things like women being paid less. Teachers for example, are highly trained and after experience very skilled workers, bur are paid significantly less than doctors or vets because they are more likely to be women. Most of the world is run by people barely getting by, in the pandemic they were called key workers. Without them, nothing would work.

As some pp have said, pay is about profit and how much/whether you make any. There’s zero doubt in my mind that being a paediatric A and E nurse making calls about children’s lives whilst working 12hr shifts in a highly pressured environment is far harder than being a recruitment consultant for example. Both jobs are useful and hard work but is the pay difference a reflection of the job’s level of responsibility/stress/knowledge? No, absolutely not. Everyone wants to justify earning a high income and can therefore find any means by which to “prove” that it’s justified. It’d be a lot more honest to admit that pay isn’t always a reflection of anything other than capitalism in action, and to appreciate what they’ve got. One thing I’ll be advising my DC is to not go into public service professions as most require degrees and/or masters, long hours, high responsibility, hard work, high stress and poor pay.

Salary reflects your market value. How much ££ your company can make from you coupled with how easy/hard you are to replace. A vet is one of a small pool of individuals with a specific qualification and people pay handsomely for the work of a vet (because they have to because those services can only be offered by a limited pool of people). Cleaning services can theoretically be done by anyone so there is no need to pay high wages to keep a person with a rare qualification and people won’t pay the same for an hours cleaning as they would for an hour vet appointment.

Higher paid jobs are often no physically harder (and are normally easier) than minimum wage but normally need the employee to have a skill that is in high demand and that few others have.

Society wouldn't collapse if we suddenly had no vets. If people couldn't get their shopping, there would be huge problems. You can disagree if you like, but I'm not wrong.

The difference is most people could be recruited into a super market to do the job in an emergency, I could, my ds could. But I couldn't replace a vet.

I think you’re confusing a number of things. Being a SAHP isn’t a job. It has no market value, and is not rewarded. The person doing it has chosen for whatever reason to be economically inactive. If you want to be well paid for monotony and childcare, become a Norland nsnny.

Pay is relative to the fees earned for the work done and/or the specialism/expertise of the worker.

Research shows the opposite is generally true. Management have less stress than the actual workers.

Thinking you are paid for your hours is the mistake people on lower salaries make.

I held senior positions in FTSE100s until health problems put paid to a career and now I work a low level job.

The difference is I don’t have the responsibility or accountability which add pressure. I’m not expected to pick up emails or phone calls outside of my working hours. I don’t make the big million pound decisions. I don’t need any special expertise. I don’t have a role in shaping the direction or success of my company.

Ultimately, I am paid poorly because I am easily replaceable. It really wouldn’t matter who did my job.

I don't agree.
My current job as a nursery nurse is much harder than when I worked in retail and much more responsibility (especially trying to keep children, parents, managers, head office and Ofsted happy) but I earned more working in retail.
Don't get me wrong I knew it was a badly paid job but it does seem unfair when we're looking after parents most important thing in the world.

Training is unpaid for most people, too. Going in at graduate level to a job you've been educated for should pay enough to make up for the years of debt/no pay while you train.

Teachers starting work 4 years later than their peers should get a bit more. To catch up on 4 years of debt.

The system is fucked up, though. Pay is all out of kilter.

Is a well paid job with less stress a reward for working hard at the low paid job that was effectively training for the current position?

And shouldn't skill/talent be rewarded as well as hours and effort?

I completely agree with that.

I was just making the point that just because a job is lower paid doesn't mean it's low value to society as a whole.

It’s about the profit you generate. A mediocre solicitor with the gift of the gab who brings in clients is higher paid and more value to the firm than the meticulous harder working better lawyer who is quiet and doesn’t bring in new clients. The former will whizz up the career ladder.

Well cleaners arguably are paid pretty well given you don’t need any qualifications to do the job. Where I live it’s 17 an hour using employers products. That is a lot higher than the minimum wage. Therefore there is definitely some supply/ demand going on there- ie wage is higher than for jobs requiring similar skill levels.

public sector jobs are different because what those people can be paid depends on how much tax people are willing to pay. Doctors are really badly paid compared to other jobs they could have done with that level of intellect/ education. There are also other factors- lack of teachers seems to be more about conditions rather than pay.

I think skill and how hard to replace that PP suggested is accurate. Think of a Premier league football player. Hard to replace with lots of skill in their position. Lots of people can play football but few at the premier level.

‘All day golfing’. What a simplistic view of things. That person could have spent years studying and then training. Worked their way up, worked long hours or worked abroad. You just don’t know. Obviously a company executive responsible for budgets and sales and profits is not going to earn the same as a shelf stacker in Tesco.

I don't think the "hardness" of a job can be quantified in simple terms. It's more about a combination of factors, including the knowledge and skills required to do the job; the level of responsibility involved in the job; the number of hours worked and the intensity of those hours; the level of autonomy and control that someone has over how they actually do the job; the level of external scrutiny that they are subjected to; tthe level of job security; the overall complexity of the work being done; the nature and quality of the working environment; the extent to which the work is dangerous, physically or emotionally demanding etc, rewarding and enjoyable etc.

Maybe they should swap jobs then. The vet could work in the supermarket and the check out person could be a vet. Oh wait….

It is about scarcity more than value to society. And if it takes longer to train for something, then this will be more scarce. If I am short if shelf-stackers, I can quickly recruit some more whereas if I need to recruit say an Eiffel programmer there will probably be very few available. The downside of this is that there will always be lots of jobs available stacking shelves whereas specialist opportunities won't be so readily available.

I agree that not all jobs are equal, it’s obvious someone working in retail should be paid less than a doctor.
It’s obvious that the boss is paid more than the cleaner.

I only actually came on to this thread as I saw teaching pay has been brought up (again) so I have come on again to say that I honestly think we are more than adequately paid. The constant way it is brought up in every salary thread - no other profession does it. So teachers, you know what the job is and how much it pays when you go into it, you all did your teaching practices (or placement as we call it now) and saw the hours needed you had the choice then.

Well it’s definitely not like that in my team. They are given a certain amount of cases per day. They process them. If there’s a problem they escalate it up, end of their involvement. It’s nothing like running multiple teams with multiple problems going on that managers need to sort out, resources issuing, world crisis that need process changes in 24hrs. None of that involves the workers. I guess it depends on the organisation and what the managers do, just line managers I’d say they probably have limited stress, managing multiple operational teams, somewhat different.