One thing that the pandemic lockdowns have revealed in glowing detail is that the vast majority of the most critical and important jobs in society are among the lowest-paid: retail and foodservice.
> the most critical and important jobs in society are among the lowest-paid: retail and foodservice
Pay has nothing to do with how critical or important a job is. Nothing.
Pay is determined — like everything else — by supply and demand.
Nails are the most ‘critical and important’ component of a house. They are also the cheapest. Because the supply is endless. The chandelier in the entryway, on the other hand, is neither critical nor important, yet it costs a great deal more than a nail.
Nah, it's status. We have a teacher and nurse shortage in the US, they're critical professions, and they're super underpaid. Supply and demand doesn't explain the low wages.
Yeah but step 2 of that is "wage increase" (then step 3 of that is "either school A increases wages or school B increases wages and gets all the teachers, etc.) You can't arbitrarily pick a point at which you stop making an appeal to authority to Econ 101; it's all or nothing.
The point here is, the situation should make us ask ourselves "huh, I wonder why wages aren't increasing." But I can save you some time and tell you the answer is mostly we don't think those jobs are high status enough.
I'm compensated fairly, and my pension makes it actually quite well compensated. The career does suck and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but for someone needing mobility from generational poverty it can work.
The career opportunities upon retirement are nothing to be trivialized either. Compensation there may not be SWE level, but it's WELL above median.
Military isn't paid too badly once you factor in pensions and benefits. The amount of salary that you'd have to save to construct something similar out of 401ks is... high.
I don’t think many people understand just HOW high.
Aside from monetary compensation (which can range widely, and typically is made up of 25-50% tax sheltered disability pay) there is health insurance at a maximum out of pocket of $3600/year for a family ($600 premium plus $3000 catastrophic cap), tax free shopping, discounted fuel, free flights, remarkably cheap lodging all over the US and in allied countries, and the list goes on.
The last calculation I saw for an average Senior Enlisted retiree was that you would need a lump sum of in excess of $3 million to hope to compare, invested at a decent return. Albeit that’s not completely accurate, but it’s as close as we can get given such different financial vehicles.
It's more like the requirement to do the job without being able to quit for at least a few years (and then they can call you back anytime for another few).
Yeah, but if you decided to pay nurses/firefighters the same salary for putting in half the hours, you'd have to hire twice as many to cover the same shifts. Net result is your labor costs would double.
