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It depends where. In my leafy suburban town, there are 20+ officers who made 6 figures last year. Union. Very friendly contract. Incredibly generous retirement benefits. They all supplement their pay working details. Surf the internet on your smartphone from your cop car parked next to the crew digging a hole in the road for $50/hour. For a high school C student who might have a community college criminal justice degree, it's a pretty good gig.
A city cop? They earn every penny.
The Massachusetts state troopers who draw the Massachusetts Turnpike detail average $150K. That's traffic cop, not dealing with hardened criminals. It's split roughly 2/3 base salary and 1/3 detail work.
I'm sure there are plenty of places where cops don't get paid like that but that's how union Northeast Corridor cops get paid from DC to Boston. Public school teacher comp is also pretty high for the number of days worked. Scaled up to the 3 weeks paid vacation and 10 company holidays the rest of us get, it's very high pay for what is normally an "easy" major in college.
You're probably right with the "It depends where". The same can be said about your teacher example.
I almost never work long hours but we are definitely underpaid. Pay is not commensurate with the level of the difficulty of the degree and EIT/PE exams. I'd say less then 1% of the people on this board are capable of passing those two tests, yet most Civils top out at $80k depending on location. Most of the larger firms have cut health care benefits, bonuses, retirement plans and have reduced PTO (although I have received unpaid leave when I ask for it).
To top in off I'm just under $40K in debt for my bachelors!!! To middle fingers up to ASU and the construction industry in general.
It's because America does not care about infrastructure, I have another thread asking if there are far more opprotunity in other nations for science and engineering.
To me anything less than 6 figures and a non at-will job for scientists and engineers is the market telling us to leave but I'm not living in a Mid East country for less than a half mil a year. So I'm not sure what the answer is.
I think that Jail Guards are also underpaid. These people have to deal with some of the worst types of people to exist, and there is an extreme death risk for them. They need to be making more than $40,000/year.
Put me in the, "there's no such thing as an underpaid job in a free market" camp. That said, I do feel that some salaries don't correlate very well with the difficulty, risk, aptitude, intelligence, education, or physical effort required to perform them. But what I feel doesn't matter if there isn't a demand for those fields, or if the employees of those fields are easily replaced.
"Long haul truck drivers. No long haul truck driver should take home less then a $1k a week for all they put up with. Without truck drivers the country would collapse."
I came to this specific forum to ask if what my son-in-law is making as a long haul truck driver is reasonable. True, he has only worked since last October, but he isn't even making $450 a week BEFORE taxes and other deductions. He's paid by the mile and perhaps that's standard. I know this because my daughter asked for help paying her car insurance recently and explained why she was asking, telling me what he made per mile and what his last paycheck was.
My concern is he says he was told he would be making much more, but this is a pattern with him, in my opinion. He has quit several jobs because he claims things were not as he was told in the interview process--not just pay but other details of the job and I do understand that can happen. I really don't know what to think or say as they are both very defensive on this subject and I truly don't want to interfere in their lives, but can't help but be worried. Thanks in advance for any insight!
"Long haul truck drivers. No long haul truck driver should take home less then a $1k a week for all they put up with. Without truck drivers the country would collapse."
I came to this specific forum to ask if what my son-in-law is making as a long haul truck driver is reasonable. True, he has only worked since last October, but he isn't even making $450 a week BEFORE taxes and other deductions. He's paid by the mile and perhaps that's standard. I know this because my daughter asked for help paying her car insurance recently and explained why she was asking, telling me what he made per mile and what his last paycheck was.
My concern is he says he was told he would be making much more, but this is a pattern with him, in my opinion. He has quit several jobs because he claims things were not as he was told in the interview process--not just pay but other details of the job and I do understand that can happen. I really don't know what to think or say as they are both very defensive on this subject and I truly don't want to interfere in their lives, but can't help but be worried. Thanks in advance for any insight!
I drove big trucks to get through college. Your son-in-law is NOT lying. Most drivers do not make $15/hr.
OTR drivers do not get paid by the hour, so if the truck is not moving, then there is no income. A lot of the drivers day is not being compensated. Breakdowns (even flat tires), loading unloading (are there 100 trucks ahead of him?), meals, fueling, wrecks, slow traffic, etc.... all of this adds up to crappy pay.
There is a huge turnover for drivers for a reason. Hopefully, the US can get more good paying jobs and more drivers will get out of the trucks. The trucking industry has treated drivers like crap for decades and it is about time it all bites them....hard.
Find yourself a good trucking forum and listen to the drivers. Sure, you will get those that defend the industry because they are defending their decision to be a driver, but mostly you will hear the truth.
Don't listen to the companies. They need you to come drive. Even if you only deliver one load, they are better off than they were if you did not deliver the load.
The only way to make money in trucking is to find a local company who pays a more than decent hourly wage. The best way to do that is to keep your MVR clean and get at least two years of commercial driving experience before doing that search. When you're a local driver, you cannot be afraid of doing some physical work because it's more than driving and shifting gears.
I work for a wastewater company now and make more than I did in food service, and especially more than I ever did slaving away in Texas. Septic tanks aren't as bad to deal with as I was originally thinking. There are definitely some odors that make my stomach turn. It's usually when pumping the sludge runoff at any given mushroom farm.
"Long haul truck drivers. No long haul truck driver should take home less then a $1k a week for all they put up with. Without truck drivers the country would collapse."
I came to this specific forum to ask if what my son-in-law is making as a long haul truck driver is reasonable. True, he has only worked since last October, but he isn't even making $450 a week BEFORE taxes and other deductions. He's paid by the mile and perhaps that's standard. I know this because my daughter asked for help paying her car insurance recently and explained why she was asking, telling me what he made per mile and what his last paycheck was.
My concern is he says he was told he would be making much more, but this is a pattern with him, in my opinion. He has quit several jobs because he claims things were not as he was told in the interview process--not just pay but other details of the job and I do understand that can happen. I really don't know what to think or say as they are both very defensive on this subject and I truly don't want to interfere in their lives, but can't help but be worried. Thanks in advance for any insight!
He isn't BSing you. It really is like that. ALL of the OTR companies are garbage. There isn't a driver shortage. It's all BS. OTR is just a stepping stone for the home daily type of driving jobs.
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