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The hardness of a job actually commensurate with pay?

Venom

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Some more well paid individuals really like to play up that they make more money because they "work harder" or "provide more to society". But what about the ibanker and the construction worker? What's "harder":
<> manual labor
or
<> looking busy on excel
???

Some people then reverse engineer the "makes more money must therefore be harder" into "makes less money, must therefore be much easier". Take a generic set of skills such as being organized, superior at planning, and adequate social/presentation skills. These skills could be put into use as both a teacher or a middle manager. Most people will assume that teaching is easier just because it pays less (not saying I agree).

So is it true? Does more money = harder, less money = easy? My guess is that besides the obvious economic answers (easy money will attract more applicants and therefore drive the money down to more closely match the effort level), there is a protestant work ethic thing going on. People don't want to feel guilty that they make more money, and so rationalize that what they do must be "harder".

What do you think?
 
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Thalassa

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I don't think there's real correlation between work difficulty and higher pay, though there are in some instances, such as practicing medicine.

Some jobs are exceedingly physically difficult or mentally stressful or require higher education and don't pay that well.

However, some construction workers and coal miners do make a decent salary, but coal miners should probably make even more than they already do given the dangerous nature of the work.

CEOs of companies are largely overpaid, teachers are largely underpaid, and I made more money as a topless dancer than I did running my ass off as a waitress.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there is a loose correlation between education or skill and pay, but it's definitely not a fixed thing by any stretch of the imagination.

In many ways I think the present state of the American economy is absolutely crap.
 

Octarine

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There is a correlation, but it's not as strong as you might first think. I think on the low end (from low skill minimum wage), to medium skill there is a moderately high effect, but this decreases as wages get higher. Why can an anaesthetist earn twice that of a GP? Are they worth this much (I doubt it)?
It's about supply and demand. Sometimes the level of prestige of a particular job is out of proportion with the level of skill involved, or wages, resulting in a glut of applicants (eg certain academic fields).

However, some construction workers and coal miners do make a decent salary, but coal miners should probably make even more than they already do given the dangerous nature of the work.

It really depends on where you live. In Australia, coal miners can receive high incomes, but in China... Likewise, construction works in Qatar or the UAE receive terrible wages due to exploitation of a labour glut from South Asia.
 

Thalassa

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I was speaking specifically of the United States since the OP was talking about "Protestant work ethic" and investment bankers vs. teachers, which doesn't tend to be as much of a heinous problem in many countries Western Europe.

Yes, of course if we begin talking about Southeast Asia we can also discuss people who are making pennies a day to do horrible labor. Which would in some cases actually relate back to American companies.
 

Meek

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I'm a house keeper at the moment and I get paid shitty and I work extremely hard. It is the hardest job in the hotel.
If not for the house keepers, the hotel wouldn't really be running.

Being a business man obviously may be hard work mentally, and they get paid a lot.
Being a construction worker, I think may be hard work mentally and physically.

I don't see a lot of fat business men doing much physical work- Obviously.

Therefore, I think it's harder on the grunt worker who gets both ends of the shit stick.

There are some places that pay a lot but not as much as being an architect or corporate bigwig.
 

Randomnity

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I think you mean commensurate, not commiserate.

And no, obviously it's not directly related to physical difficulty. It is related to overall difficulty in the sense that if everyone could do those high-paying jobs, they could get away with paying less and most likely would do so, barring regulations. A few outliers like CEOs (influence of luck but also a "difficulty" aspect - networking) throw out the curve, but overall that's the trend.

i.e, not everyone can be (or wants to jump through the hoops to be) a good doctor, an engineer, a laywer, even a wall street guy.
 
T

ThatGirl

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In my experience you work a lot harder in the lower wage jobs. You're micro-managed and that whole, "If you have time to lean you have time to clean," mentality is prevalent. In the higher paying jobs, they can be more demanding, but you can usually pace it according to what it takes to just get the job done and may work longer hours.

As far as the medical community goes, the less education you have, the harder you work and less you get paid.

I guess the answer is what you would consider hard work.
 

rav3n

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Supply and demand. The more scarce a necessary commodity, the greater the demand, the higher the price.

Take the rise and fall of developers' salaries, instead of comparing manual to intellectual labour. During the dot.com boom years, developers were making killer salaries with phenomenal benefits and were treated like demi-gods, since there wasn't enough talent to meet demand so competition was fierce. The dot.com bubble busted and so did developers' salaries, benefits and worse yet, jobs. At present, it's leveled out. While exceedingly talented developers can demand top wages, most salaries range mid to high 5 figures.
 

citizen cane

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As a social work major, it seems that social workers' pay doesn't really seem commensurate with skill, stress level, or demand. People will complain about the need for them, but their jobs tend to get cut quickly when money gets tight. Also, many positions will require a masters degree plus at least a couple years of experience, while someone in child protective services might need only a bachelors degree:shock: That's just insane.
 
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skylights

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no way.

what i do believe is that more responsibility makes more pay. the more people can theoretically blame you for something, the more you tend to get paid. thus the CEO makes more than the manager makes more than the wage slave.

theoretically, of course. we all know that in reality the lowest person on the totem pole gets shat upon while the CEO, even if caught with his pants down (literally), escapes with his ginormous severance check.

Randomnity said:
i.e, not everyone can be (or wants to jump through the hoops to be) a good doctor, an engineer, a laywer, even a wall street guy.

that too.
 

wolfy

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Supply and demand. The more scarce a necessary commodity, the greater the demand, the higher the price.

This. This is all that really matters

Isn't that missing the power of image/reputation and so on in compensation? If it was strictly supply and demand then two people providing identical services would receive the same pay. That isn't always the case.
 

Beargryllz

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Isn't that missing the power of image/reputation and so on in compensation? If it was strictly supply and demand then two people providing identical services would receive the same pay. That isn't always the case.

But they aren't identical. One might be older, more experienced, a safer investment, and therefore worth paying more. One could be unreliable. One could have extra skills, yet provide an identical service. All of these other factors are significant, and employers (or whoever writes the check) know this. The difficulty of the labor is irrelevant, because if the job is too hard, you simply won't do it and are disqualified from the start.
 

wolfy

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But they aren't identical. One might be older, more experienced, a safer investment, and therefore worth paying more. One could be unreliable. One could have extra skills, yet provide an identical service. All of these other factors are significant, and employers (or whoever writes the check) know this. The difficulty of the labor is irrelevant, because if the job is too hard, you simply won't do it and are disqualified from the start.

Yeah, I get what you are saying. I was thinking about it some more and saw that soft skills and whatever differentiate and add to demand.
 

Bamboo

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What if it's a difficult job, but you are really good at it, so it's comparatively easy for you than for other people. Does that make it a hard job or an easy job? Does that make you deserving of higher pay or lower pay?

Does it matter?

The pay you can get for a job is what people are willing to pay for it. Supply and demand is a driver here, but I wouldn't assume that all pricing decisions are rational (or precise) ones - that's just the theory.
 

Snoopy22

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Supply and demand, and who’s more desperate at any given time. I’v seen managers who have made less then the workers they manage due the trades being employed refusing to take lower wager and other workers willing to work below min. wages by putting in extra hours off the books because they were desperate for a pay check.
 

FDG

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Sorry but supply and demand doesn't really work that well in the job market. First of all, there are thousands of ceilings (min wage, cap salary, etc.). Secondly, search costs are terribly high thus both employees and employers have a tendency towards a suboptimal equilibrium. What Bamboo said is correct, IMHO: it's just about how much someone is willing to pay you at any given time, the drivers of this pricing process are hard to know, especially if we want to construct a universal frame of reference.
 

Sanctus Iacobus

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Pay has very little to do with the job. That's like saying I should pay $50,000 for a Hyundai someone put together from scratch because "it took so much work to put all the pieces together". Someone with the exact same position at two different companies will be paid very differently because their production value is higher in one, their sales are higher, and the budget trickles down in a larger ratio to each employee.

Pay is determined by how the budget trickles down, not up. Budget is allocated based on production value. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule and it's unwise to think of the economy that way because people commonly do what feels best to them regardless of how wise it is.
 

Magic Poriferan

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Not a grain of truth to this.

I'm working toward a clerk typist 2 position. I don't have it yet, but I have a similar job and work with lots of people who are. If I get the job, I'd make more money than my father ever made. This job, however, is substantially easier to do than what he did for the prior 20 years to him being laid off (wood worker).

Me and my father are but one example, but other examples are all around. The reality has historically almost been the opposite of that claim. The poorer you are the, harder you work.

At any rate, an economy couldn't really operate on giving people money based on how hard they work because that would totally disregard supply and demand.
 

Rail Tracer

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Not a grain of truth to this.

I'm working toward a clerk typist 2 position. I don't have it yet, but I have a similar job and work with lots of people who are. If I get the job, I'd make more money than my father ever made. This job, however, is substantially easier to do than what he did for the prior 20 years to him being laid off (wood worker).

Me and my father are but one example, but other examples are all around. The reality has historically almost been the opposite of that claim. The poorer you are the, harder you work.

At any rate, an economy couldn't really operate on giving people money based on how hard they work because that would totally disregard supply and demand.

But which is harder? ;)

Some would cry at the notion of having to sit and type in one spot for most of the day. Probably the biggest difference between the two is that you can work as a typist until you are a very old age while a construction worker may be done around his 40/50's because of medical problems.

Woodworkers are rare, but there probably isn't much need of them as opposed to a typist (after all... we are living in this day and age where most Americans have computers of some sort.)

In this part of Northern California, it is very possible to be a millionaire and a farmer. One of the riches peach grower in the world even lives here. But when we think of farmers, we don't think of them as particularly rich (unless people think of Napa Valley.)
 
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