Ten most underpaid jobs in the U.S.

[EMTbravo 312]

This article from CBSMarketwatch was sent to me by MSanj. On this list are Police Officer and EMT/Paramedic. Pretty interesting insight.

Ten most underpaid jobs in the U.S.  

Commentary: Most require skill, courage and heart  

 

By Chris Pummer, CBS MarketWatch

Last Update: 12:37 PM ET Nov. 13, 2003  

 

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:  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.  

 

[Oswegowind 17]

I think that I am the lowest Paid!!!!!!! 8)

[Guest EMSwhitecloud]

notice that the professions most needed are least paid??? thats amusing.... :roll:

[firemn23 8]

I think most of us are the least paid we get nothing

[Guest EMSwhitecloud]

If your talking about volunteering.....your right, but we volunteer because we want to help, not because we want to get paid. I love the feeling I get when I volunteer, just means I have to find a paying job..lol