Pilots and Professors Barely Scraping By? 9 Surprising Jobs That Pay a Pittance

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/pilots-and-professors-barely-scraping-9-surprising-jobs-pay-pittance




1. Regional Airline Pilots

Senior pilots working for major international carriers earn a pretty good living. But flying for regional carriers – which employ about 13 percent of all pilots – means not only having to worry about weather and navigation, but also how you'll pay your bills at the end of the month.


2. Adjunct Professors

This profession is similarly tiered; tenured professors at private universities make a handsome salary of around $135,000 per year, on average. But an increasing number of courses are being taught by part-time adjunct professors – they now teach 75 percent of all classes, according to Inside Higher Education – and many of them are barely scraping by. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, adjunct report being paid an average of $2,987 per 3-credit course. But at some community colleges, that figure is as low as $1,100; the average pay at rural two-year colleges is $1,808, or around $22,000 per year. As part-timers, they rarely receive benefits like health insurance.

3. Home Health/Psychiatric Aides

It's long been the case that occupations that have traditionally been seen as “women's work” tend not to pay well, and home health and psychiatric aides are no exception. But consider how difficult this job is – if you've ever cared for someone who is too elderly or handicapped to care for themselves, you know it's no picnic. This is also a profession that requires some trust – you don't want to leave grandpa with just anyone.


4. Ambulance Drivers and Attendants

They're first responders, with lives in their hands, and they make just $11.97 per hour, on average, according to BLS. One would think you wouldn't want the ambulance rushing you to the hospital to be driven by someone who has to work a second job to make ends meet, but that's often the case.

[Brainstormy]

1. As an adjunct professor

I taught for 14 years. When I started, with a Master's Degree, I taught classes of about 15 pupils, had my own office, a parking pass, and only had to serve on committees or "volunteer" for activities like Writing Lab for about 4 hours per quarter. When I quit, with a Ph.D., I was teaching classes of 30 or more, shared an office with four people, spent five bucks a day to park, volunteered 4 hours per week and made exactly fifty bucks a quarter more than when I'd started. No benefits ever.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Depending on the college and the specialty, even full-time professors

may earn no more than $60-75,000 a year.

I got out of academia when my job at one college ended (paying about $30,000 twenty years ago), and almost all the ones available in my field were either adjunct positions or one-year to three-year limited contracts for $20,000-$25,000, some of them renewable only once.

I didn't like the idea of moving every couple of years from one podunk town to another (the jobs were in out-of-the-way state colleges), so I left academia.

I miss the steady monthly income and benefits, but the stress level is lower overall.

[Posteritatis]

2. It boggles me that people still think any of those jobs pay well. (nt)

[chervilant]

3. Your comment got me thinking ...

Are there any jobs available that pay well, and that are obtainable by people other than the wealthy and their friends/families? (I'm not talking about professional athletes or actors. I mean reasonable careers.)

I'm skeptical...

[Posteritatis]

8. Oh, I've seen several, I just don't associate the careers on that list with good pay

I'm a contracted data entry clerk for a museum right now and I'm out-earning sessional professors in this town. That just shouldn't be.

[egold2604]

4. Being a lecturer sucks

I taught several marketing courses at a big ten university years ago as an adjunct. Since I did marketing as a profession, I taught a real world approach to the subject. Needless to say, I had the second highest rating of any of the professors in the department. The highest rating always went to a professor who taught an specialized course to 8 advanced Ph.D. students.

After teaching for 10 years, they offered me a full time contact position with a year to year renewal. I would be able to get benefits and teach more than 5 courses a semester. I asked if it came with free parking and a raise. The answer was no. I would get a raise in a couple of years.

Since I was a consultant and had to travel globally for my clients, teaching full time would mean that I could not consult any more. When I explained that I would have to take a major cut in pay to teach full time, they refused. I stopped teaching and never looked back.

It was fun while it lasted, but I could never afford to do it again.

[fasttense]

5. It is the inevitable decline of wages that capitalism always creates.

The less a CEO and board of directors, employers and bosses, have to pay for the labor of people who do the real work, the more they get to keep. When a country allows employers to hire immigrants for less, when it allow corporations to move jobs out but still sell products in the country, when it destroys unions and gets rid of all restraining controls on corporations, it creates a labor pool of desperate hungry people who are ripe for abuse and exploitation. This is how capitalism works. It always, always, always pressures capitalists to pay less and less to the people who do the real work.

When the US has wages equal to Communist China, then some job will return but at such a low wage that the rich American middle class will no longer exist.

Welcome to unrestrained capitalism. Capitalism is a corrupt and exploitive system of economics. It has to change.

[ewagner]

6. fasttense got to the root of the problem

in my "old age" I'm starting to question the very basis of our existing system.

[MindPilot]

7. "Ambulance Drivers"? Seriously? That term is a little dated, doncha think?

But terminology aside, these jobs used to be called "paying your dues". That regional pilot was just finishing up his degree and on his way to a transcontinental airliner. The adjunct was just waiting for a slot to open up on a tenure track.

But now the whole idea of working your way up just doesn't seem to exist much. I look around and people are stuck; there really isn't much opportunity to grow in a job any more.