Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Sunday, May 23, 2010

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.

4 comments:

Phil said...

Master mechanic, I make less now than I did ten fucking years ago, 18 bucks an hour, as a shop foreman with three people under me.
At fifty years old, ya don't justrun out and find another job theses days either.

Fuck you Reagan.

One Fly said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
One Fly said...

I feel so lucky. $22+ with not too bad of benefits. Work for Texans and just 1% to the 401K from them. This will be coming to an end soon. 20 years ago started at $11.

Here in a service related economy many work 2-3 jobs to survive.

Things are not good at all in ski town usa and appear to be worsening.

Anonymous said...

Around here, big stores like Target pay average wages in the stores, not that you can live on it in this expensive area. But in their warehouses? Oh. My. Freaking. Gods. They hire temps by the 100, and pay them crap, force overtime and days off working and treat them like serfs. This is the future of American labor if we don't wake up and legislate against such abuses.