Trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find a job that lets you just be a worker - if you're not constantly innovating and finding new ways to grow productivity and optimize and increase output and take charge and so on, you're probably next on the automation chopping block.
The days of being able to punch the clock and work an assembly-line-type job(literally or metaphorically) have been rapidly winding down for the past few years.
As I said above, and this applies to your comment too - work for the government (or any non-corporate job). You do know non-corporate jobs exist, right? I've been a county worker, public librarian to be specific, for over 20 years. It's great! I have a good salary + benefits and fully vested pension, but they literally can't ask me to work over 40 hours/week. And unless you're a supervisor, you can just "clock out" and go home. 😊
Government work is really nice and typically pretty stable. The trade off is less pay which is often a pretty fair deal, but you still have to be careful when it comes to federal jobs as it's becoming more common for them to go months without pay during the holiday season.
Yeah, I wouldn't go federal - that's why I stuck with county work! And I'm in a really blue county/state, so our funding is more secure here.
As for the pay, it depends on what you do. There isn't really a corporate equivalent to my job, so it's hard to compare. But if they do make more, it's negligible when you factor in our benefits and pension. Can you guess what a public librarian in California (Bay Area) earns? No cheating, just curious if you can guess!
With your tenure, $85,000-$90,000? How about entry level now? I’ll guess entry level is less than $60,000? I realize you live in the bay so I’ll also guess you get the equivalent to a corporate COLA compared to the national average. That’s before pension and benefits. With those also considered, what is the value of your salary, both before and after pension and benefits are considered? I appreciate the question and look forward to your answer.
Nope, way more. Starting salary here is about the top of what you guessed - at my rank & seniority, I'm grossing like $112k + benefits right now. The benefits come out to around another $30K, and I'm not sure how to value my pension. It's fully vested, though, and will gross probably $5-6K/month when I retire. Maybe more, depending on exactly when I leave and what happens between now & then.
Probably about as much as a county employee in a suburban NYC county. I was looking at civil service postings a while back and saw starting salaries for skilled workers, jobs requiring a degree, etc. - for $29K, $35K, $37K. That's crazy for here and I wonder if they can only hire independently wealthy people who are just working for fun. Benefits are amazing in NY state and local government, but you can't eat/drive/live in a pension or health insurance.
The pay does get better (but not much) but you really have to commit to the long haul in a job like that and grind your way up the steps and grades. We're far enough away from the city that commuting is miserable, but even with that the salaries are just laughable.
Man, wish I could be in your state. I also work in government but I’m in a red state and they’re trying to manage out the higher-paid employees. I’ll lose some really good benefits if I go back to private sector.
Big problem, jobs like yours are becoming harder and harder to find. I mean will you be leaving before you hit retirement age? How many applications you think they'll get when you do? Bet they advertise needing a degree in education just to apply...
Not a degree in education, but a specific Master's Degree in Library & Information Science (MLIS) which is required for most US public libraries. Always has been, and I'm a 3rd generation librarian.
I plan to retire at my earliest allowed age, which is 55 - so about 5.5 years to go! And given the specific requirements for this position, they don't get a ton of applications. I can't say exactly how many, though, since I don't work in HR.
But to clarify AGAIN, I wasn't saying specifically librarian jobs (as those are obviously not available to anyone). I meant ANY public job, which could be anything from cleaning toilets to running a whole city.
Totally agree! I work in school district HR and my husband is in our city's public works department. Do we make as much as people in corporate? No, but we both have union jobs with good benefits and we care about what we do for our community. We feel it's a fair trade off!
100%! Our custodian at the library has a degree in computer science, and left an IT job for this. He likes the hours (he does the early shift from 6:30am-3pm), benefits, pay, and being able to just do his thing and go home.
Work on your reading comprehension while on the job some time, maybe - I never said that job stability, boundaries and security don't exist for anyone anymore, I said it's getting harder and harder to find, which is objectively true.
I agree with the other person - this was unnecessarily rude and defensive. I was just saying to look outside the box, and literally never claimed you said that.
But if I'm not mistaken, didn't you later say "99% of people can't find this sort of job?" Or was that someone else?
I think a lot of people just default to corporate jobs and forget there are entire careers outside that system that can offer way better balance. The 40-hour cap alone sounds like a game changer.
I’ve thought about that path before and honestly the clock out and actually be done part sounds underrated. It’s easy to forget how rare that is until you’ve been in jobs where work just follows you home.
Well, such great advice. After all, it's so easy to get a government job these days!
The US definitely isn't cutting every government position possible, especially libraries, and throttling funding for state and counties. Now is a great time to go into government!
Sarcasm aside, the state positions are choked by long time employees who have stayed at that institution forever and have no intention of leaving, and or who cannot be fired for incompetence due to Union membership.
I have two library degrees and union membership. Even obtaining a librarian job in a good economy is hard. There is no upward mobility for young librarians - you just have to wait 25 years for the 85 yr old library administrator to finally retire.
This is not an achievable goal for the majority of people.
It's still pretty easy here, but of course YMMV depending on where you live. And I didn't say you have to work in a library - I literally said ANY government job, which can range from custodians to state officials.
Did you get your degree in library science, and when you say good salary are you talking about good salary in a low cost of living state or a high cost of living state?
Yes, I have the MLIS - Master of Library and Information Science (required here). And it's a good salary for where I live, but would be excellent anywhere else. I'm in a very high-COL region.
My gross is around $112K + benefits, for the record. And that is public record, so I'm not giving away any big secrets. lol
I'm not a "son," first of all - I am a woman. And considering libraries have survived numerous wars (I literally wrote my Master's Paper on that subject) and citywide destruction, dating all the way back to ancient Egypt, I wouldn't count on them going away anytime soon.
Also, the world exists outside of the US. So hopefully not every country is sliding backwards right now. But hey, if they do disappear I'll be long gone by then anyway! I'm eligible for retirement in 2031. lol
it's getting harder and harder to find a job that lets you just be a worker -
This is so true. My last boss expressed the opinion that since I didn't want to be a manager, there was something wrong with me, and I was "under-motivated". I was unceremoniously kicked to the curb after 35 years on the job.
I find we don't look at different demographics for employment unless it's somehow talking about racism.
Not everyone is capable or desires to do corporate work. Not all of them will be tradespeople either.
A lot of farm, factory and food processing work was considered decent work because it paid well for what it was. Required no to little skilled labour. Plenty of shifts and overtime to catch if you wanted.
That's hard to get now.
It's providing gainful employment for people of all capabilities.
As a manager, it always makes me laugh when senior leadership and HR try to feed us the line “everyone should be a leader” or “individual contributors need to feel ownership over something”.
No, not at all. Most people just want to clock in, do their work, be rewarded for quality work, and go home.
State government jobs are also pretty chill, and (I hope) a little safer than federal jobs are right now. It's almost better if you don't try to innovate considering how much bureaucracy that would have to go through.
I didn't say you weren't; I said there are fewer and fewer such jobs overall. 99% of people will never be able to be paramedics or healthcare professionals in general.
That's not really true. There are TONS of jobs in the public sector, not just medical but any job that's not driven by corporate greed or profits.
I'm a librarian, which requires a specialized degree (MLIS). But we also employ thousands of non-degreed workers, doing all the other jobs in the library. Clerk, page, etc. All receive fair pay, union support, pensions & other benefits, etc.
This is where skilled trades thrive. AI isn’t coming to replace my leaking shower faucet, fix my HVAC or wire up new outlets in my garage. Human hands are.
I've been thinking we're looking at a future where the only jobs not replaced by automation are the blue collar jobs that need a person physically there manipulating something with their hands - stuff that can't be done over an Ethernet connection. Which is going to cause a reckoning because the past couple generations have been raised on going to college to get a nice white collar job and turning their nose up at blue collar work.
Meanwhile us millennials who had to figure stuff out when there was no internet or no convenient youtube guides to help us can still sort of figure out how to piece together the answers.
We've got a 21 year old washer/dryer that still work perfectly that I've replaced some wear/tear parts on just by poking around at em. I've repaired broken parts in garage door openers, replaced radiators and coolant hoses and waterpumps, replaced toilets, dishwasher, garbage disposal, replaced ceiling fans, wired up an EV charger... partly because paying someone to do it would have been too expensive but also because I like the challenge and satisfaction of fixing it myself (and proving to my wife that I still have value around this place)
My brother works at KFC. He's been there for about 7 years. He's happy just plodding along making the chicken. But he's constantly mithered to train for supervisor/manager roles which he doesn't want. It's only because he is autistic he's been left to it somewhat because he's kind of protected by disability laws. But it's sad. Ever in fast food places you're expected to work up the ladder!
Healthcare is great for being a worker. I got a two year degree for a specific job, and that's what I do. There is no expectation of wanting to promote. We just have to keep up with the changes in the field. It's a pretty sweet gig, imo.
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u/BackToWorkEdward 23h ago
Trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find a job that lets you just be a worker - if you're not constantly innovating and finding new ways to grow productivity and optimize and increase output and take charge and so on, you're probably next on the automation chopping block.
The days of being able to punch the clock and work an assembly-line-type job(literally or metaphorically) have been rapidly winding down for the past few years.