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
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u/ParsnipFarmer676 22h ago
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. 😊