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In Reply to: Earned the right ? How ? posted by AbeCollins on April 1, 2022 at 15:12:54:
People get too fixated on the dollar amount per hour because they keep thinking back to when they were earning minimum wage.
I made $4.10 an hour minim wage when I was 16 and so $15 an hour seems like a helluva lot - except that our home was $150,000 in 1990 and now sells for $650,000. I suppose min wage has kind of kept up - house when up around 4 times and so did min wage.
The issue isn't education - people are far more educated in numbers today than ever - the difference is a lack of actual jobs.
Using my field of education as an example. Back in the early 1900s, you could leave high school take a quick 6-month course - become a teacher and walk into a job full time and hold that job for life.
After WWII it was still somewhat the same - population grows schools get bigger and they would hire a Teacher as well as have dedicated special needs schools with highly trained special education teachers who knew all about Fetal Alchohol syndrome and Autism and these folks held 4-year degrees. They also had Special Education Assistants. Those schools hired janitors and principals and secretaries. High schools had counsellors one kind for academic counselling and one kind for behavioural emotional needs.
You finished your degree - you went out and got a full-time position and you're set for life.
Those days are gone. Now you need a 5.5-year university degree in Canada to be a teacher. To get into the program you need an A- or better average and all of that for basically the lowest paying "profession."
You certainly don't walk into full-time for-life jobs. Many teachers have other jobs to get by.
The special needs schools all closed - the SEN students were all entered into the regular school system for cost reasons (although they tried to spin it as inclusion). The idea is to get the regular students to get used to special needs people as they will associate with them in their future life. Which doesn't happen - but it's a good way to close down a school dire all the employees but one - you send that one to the regular school to be a SEW (special Ed Worker) for 1/2 the pay and they cover all the classes in the school. So you have 4 times the number of teachers coming out of universities for 1/3 the jobs that used to exist.
This is great because you have a ton of supply (teachers) and less demand. Now you don't have to pay them anything. Don't like it then quit. SO the buying power of teachers in 2005 was 50% lower than in 1985. Ie; wages did not keep up with inflation.
So now you have university grads in teaching making crap money as substitutes for a decade when they finally land their first full-time paying job and the pay isn't all that much higher than someone working at Costco - only they have $100k in student debt to pay back.
I saw this more than some of my classmates because before I changed careers I worked at a steel foundry and saw the guys making $100k for welding or being a crane operator. I worked for Microsoft and Seagate Software and the Provincial government so I knew what people were being paid.
Teaching did have benefits from a teacher's perspective too. It's a great job that's a lot more enjoyable on a personal level than any of my prior jobs. You can have a lot of fun and some laughs and every day is something new unlike accounts payable - stamp form fills in the code etc - Boring as frak.
But I could see the writing on the wall - looking at my age, the job opportunities etc and the competition.
I think the other problem is the ability to transfer your education. For teachers - if you have a degree in Education and say History or English or one of the other "arts" you are somewhat stuck in the field. Same if you have a degree in accounting. If you want to change to something else - how will it transfer? What other jobs will someone hire you for?
When I go back to Canada in a few years - hoping for the summer of 2025 or 2027 at the latest I don't want to come back and teach anymore.
My arts degree and teaching certification can land me what? And this is where those higher minimum wages can also help. Older people who may not get hired due to ageism etc. If I have my house paid off and $500k in the bank - a $15 an hour minimum wage job is perfectly fine by me. That will pay off my yearly property taxes - food and entertainment money and all is good.
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- It's cost of living that matters - RGA 04/3/2201:27:18 04/3/22 (0)
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