Are you feeling underworked and overpaid? You very well may be, compared to people in the top 15 most stressful, lowest-paying careers, according to Payscale.com. CNN Money rounded these jobs up, and explained why they made the list.
Here are the top 15:
- Social worker
- Special events coordinator
- Probation officer
- News reporter
- Music ministry director
- Membership manager
- Fundraiser
- Commercial photographer
- Assisted living director
- Minister
- Marriage/family therapist
- Curator
- Substance abuse counselor
- Film/TV producer
- High school teacher
What would you add to the list? Besides your own job, of course.
Stressful jobs that pay badly [CNN Money]
(Photo: helgasms!)
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Miner.
I think that “Emergency Medical Technician” should be topping the list.. WAY above high school teacher. Low pay, long hours, dangerous/hazardous working conditions, high turnover, and very high levels of stress, both physically and mentally.
FTA: “Just ask Heather Griffith, a social worker who works with children in intensive foster care in Boston: “You’re getting paid $12 an hour and kids are screaming at you, telling you that you are just in it for the money and you’re just like, really?” “
How about .. you’re getting paid $10/hr, no benefits, and you’re on the side of the highway in the rain at two AM trying desperately to keep someone that was just hit by a drunk driver from bleeding out right in front of you.
At least in my experience, that trumps sitting in your office with “kids yelling at you and you go ‘like, really?’” any day of the week.
Membership manager: Median pay: $42,600
% who say their job is stressful: 67%”
Like, really? Come on… *sigh*
@pot_roast: That’s just one social worker. There are WAY, WAY worse stories they could have had in that article.
@Rectilinear Propagation: Yes, and I can honestly say that we see much worse. We’re the people that would usually see the sick, neglected, and injured well before social services were even called out.
The choice of including a high school teacher is really dependent on what location you are talking about. I have no doubt that it isn’t an easy job anywhere, but they are paid very well in some areas of the country.
Medical Billing Manager. The job where everyone hates you. Oh, also long hours, lots of stress and not-great pay.
Awesome!
Film/TV producer? Please. How about their assistants? I’m a producer’s assistant at a major Hollywood studio and I can tell you from experience, we’re lucky if we get a “thank you,” and they consider our proximity to powerful people like themselves part of our compensation package. Like to fill in the gap where the money should be. What an opportunity! We work unpredictable, often grueling hours, sometimes doing things related to the project, but often doing things that are utterly, repulsively personal for our bosses (who in general, are not the easiest-to-deal-with bunch). I’d guess that my boss’s biweekly check is probably 1/4 what I make in an entire year. I can’t believe producers made this list. And are there really that many of them to justify their own category?
Every employee that takes incoming calls at the T Mobile call center in Salem, OR.
My gawd, I do not envy those poor people.
They forgot Nurse. I don’t know of any other position that in most states has that many lives in their hands on a daily basis and is yet paid so little and overworked so much.
What exactly is a Music Ministry?
I have always believed life ending danger is one of the greater stresses, therefore I nominate:
Law enforcement, especially street patrol officiers.
Firemen, at all levels.
@StanTheManDean: While I agree they can be stressful, they are also paid very, very well in some areas of the country. The article seems to be taking this into account as a 50/50 equal in weighting along with the stress level. Also, just because any two given strangers you meet may be cops or firefighters, it does NOT mean they have even remotely similar day-to-day jobs. A cop in Vegas or LA is going to face far more stress on a daily basis than an officer from a more rural or suburban department. Same goes for a firefighter: a guy/gal with a fire department in an vertically urban city with older buildings like NY or Philly is probably going to have waaaaayy more daily stress than say a firefighter from a newer (modern fire codes) and spread out city like Phoenix or Vegas.
@jake.valentine:
Firefighting, where ever you are, is a stressful job. At a typical house fire we expend the same amount of energy as a marathon runner, except we do it over the course of a half hour instead of the 2 and a half hours the runner does. Vertical or horizontal, it doesn’t matter, it all beats the crap out of you.
Any added stress the big city guys get because of an increased number of runs is offset by the fact that most of the smaller departments are also doing EMS, which adds it’s own challenges and stress.
My S.O.’s mother started her career in the mid-1970s as a social worker, specializing in child protection cases. How would you like to deal with physically and sexually abused children (and their abusers) all day every day for the 2009 equivalent of $25,000/year?
That is a stressful job. A lot of the jobs people are talking about here are crappy jobs, but they are not stressful. They may be thankless, unrewarding jobs full of petty indignities but they are not stressful in the true sense of the word. If you are a waiter and make a mistake at work, what is the worst thing that can happen? What if you’re a child protection worker? That’s where stress comes from.
Likewise, some of these people in the stressful job list need to get some perspective. Music ministry director? Film producer? Commercial photographer? Give me a break.
A lot of the jobs people are talking about here are crappy jobs, but they are not stressful.
@JiminyChristmas: OK, let’s not start doing that. Yes, a social worker’s job is extremely stressful. But that doesn’t mean other people’s jobs aren’t stressful.
If you are a waiter and make a mistake at work, what is the worst thing that can happen?
You’re fired. Being completely disposable IS stressful.
Any teacher should be on this list, not just high school.
@Wokcus: I was surprised they specified high school. Saying ‘public school’ teacher maybe.
You know, all these people with stressful jobs should be thankful that they HAVE jobs. The most stressful position I’ve been in in a VERY long time was me wondering if I’m going to make rent this month and why nobody is bothering to return my calls. I’m going out of my mind with stress and getting a slightest sliver of what I was making from my rapidly running out unemployment.
So pardon me if I think the social workers and teachers of the world are whiners. I would LOVE to have their job.
So pardon me if I think the social workers and teachers of the world are whiners.
@El_Fez: Only if you’ll forgive other people for thinking the same of you.
Social worker, definitely… should be #1.
Whoever said grad student… oh please. You’re still in school. As stressed out as you’ve ever been writing that final section of your thesis, as pressured as you’ve been to do your TA work on top of everything else, school is pleasure. I love my job, but not nearly as much as I loved school. Your life is spent listening to people smarter than you lecture to you, it’s the ultimate life.
school is pleasure
@Brazell: It’s about time someone cracked a joke in this thread.
Also, I should add people who work in a drugstore pharmacy….I live in an area that is mostly senior citizens, and they treat these techs like crap. They verbally abuse them if their medications are not ready on time, or if their medication is out of stock. Usually there are only 2 people working back there, and it changed every month or so.
In-flight missile repair
Scientologist PR.
cougar wrangler.
Film Producer? I assume that this “article” is a joke with that there. As someone who does contracts to hire film producer’s, I will tell you that it’s a lot of money for (sometimes virtually, sometimes almost) no work. And if this is the one real producer on set (e.g., a line producer), if I told you how much they make a week, you would faint.
Oh Hai. I’m a social worker who does fundraising. What do I win?
How about a curator/fundraiser/special events coordinator? Since this is a university position in the arts, substance abuse counseling also comes into play, although far from officially.
Parent
I am a social worker. The stress and low pays sucks. Glad to see we are finally being recognized. LOL
American software engineer.
Photographer at PlayGirl
(not that there is anything wrong with that)
Customer Service. Period.
-Child care worker.
-Receptionist/switchboard operator for a large company
-Customer service rep
You forgot about security guards and watch man. They spend at least 8 hrs in a day sitting alone. It is really boring and needs a lot from an individual to be able to do so.
I’m sorry..but 911 operator makes about the same as a manager at MacDonalds…My husband has more stress than most doctors I know.
How the hell is Soldier not on this list? Risking your life has gotta be the highest stressor and the pay isn’t much more than peanuts (unless you consider veteran’s benefits… when you get them).
I would say any enlisted military job up to E7. As an officer, I think about the level of stress the lower enlisted deal with for the pay and started to laugh at the jobs listed. I think the majority of Soldiers would see those jobs as vacations. One reason Soldiers are transitioning over to teachers is the lack of stress. Most of the jobs listed for stress just require the person process organization skills, if they lack those then yes I can see how the job may be stressful.
How ’bout special education teachers and their paraprofessionals?
Any administrative support job which requires you to do “other duties as requested.” Which really means, “Do all my crap work that I don’t want to do.”
Also answering the phone.
Some of these are really hard to believe. News reporter? You spend half an hour reading a teleprompter into a camera, what’s stressful about that? And I thought film/tv producers were well paid.
High school teacher?! Where I live they make 60-70-80k and get 4.5 months of vacation. Where do I sign up?
How about freelance artist? Never know where your money is going to come from or if you’ll make enough this month to pay the bills. The job is rewarding, there’s nothing like being your own boss and making art, but the stress is astronomical.
veterinary technician or assistant
Airline Pilot.
I make 17k last year. I was on the road an average of 25 days a month. I flew in horrible weather, had lightning strikes, emergencies, 4 hour nights after 16 hour working days. And, through it all, in the back of my mind I knew I had many many lives behind me. To deal with the stress, I can not drink, enjoy recreational drugs nor prescribed medications, or do many other things someone might do to relax.
Tech support
Air traffic controller.
This study nailed it; and I know, being a social worker for the past seventeen years.
Being a social worker is like being both a police officer and a nun; excepting, of course, the fact that you can’t carry a gun, but you can have a family. Either way you get scr**ed.
Phone tech support.
People are angry, stupid, over-demanding. And you’re bound by ridiculous policies that you have no power over but catch constant blame for.