Grinding Down the Working Stiffs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its yearly report on what jobs people hold. The data is a year old, it takes them that long to compile it. This is the report summary.

Of the top ten jobs held by the most people, only one, nursing, pays well. For the other nine, if you were to try to support a family on the wags you earned, you'd be collecting food stamps.

These are the top ten jobs and the average wage:

Retail salespersons                                $9.74
Cashiers                                                 $8.57
General office clerks                             $12.57
Combined food preparation and
serving workers, including fast food    $8.28
Registered nurses                                   $30.65
Waiters and waitresses                          $8.50
Customer service representatives       $14.56
Laborers, material movers                  $11.11
Janitors and cleaners, except
maids and housekeeping cleaners       $10.56
Stock clerks and order fillers              $10.08

Some of the scarcer occupations make decent money. Mathematicians (2,770 jobs) average $44.99 an hour. Industrial psychologists (1,710) $40.03/hr. Prosthodontists make $53.42/hr, but there are only 660 of them. There are more locomotive firemen than that, 960, but they make a lot less: $22.63/hr.

The top ten jobs are all service-related and nine out of ten pay dogshit wages. Even in most of the factory jobs, you'd be hard-pressed to provide for a family on one paycheck.[1] It didn't used to be that way, but you'd probably have to be well into middle aged to remember when it wasn't that way.

[1]I'm sure that Rand Paul and the other dispensers of Libertarian Magic Dust think that's just peachy.