The 10 Most Overpaid Jobs

Comments

1. 1

   Bret says

   I think you forgot CEO.

   Very few Chief Executives are worth anywhere near the money they are receiving. And, when they fail spectacularly at running a business, they have to be paid millions to be fired. A recent example of this is Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, who received a $210 million severance package. Nardelli was also at the helm of Chrysler when they slipped into bankruptcy. CNBC named Robert Nardelli as one of the “Worst American CEOs of All Time”.

2. 2

   Len Penzo says

   A very good suggestion, Bret. Many folks would put them at the top of the list.

   Now I’ll start my elaborate tap dance… LOL 🙂

   I did consider the position of CEO, but left it out of my top 10 because, although you don’t read about them, for every CEO who gets paid astronomical sums, I rationalized there are two or three who work for little or no pay).

   “Well, Len, that line of reasoning holds true for some of those other professions too.” True.

   Does that reveal biased thinking toward private enterprise on my part? Yep.

   I had found that the median pay for their profession was listed at $140,350 (meaning essentially half of all CEOs made less than that). To me, considering the difficulty of the job, that didn’t warrant placing them in the Top 10.

   I’m going to take my tap shoes off now cuz my feet are getting sore. 😉

3. 3

   One Guy's Money Blog dot com says

   Great article Len. I would guess that some union workers would make the top 11 list.

4. 4

   Len Penzo says

   Thanks, Guy. I think many folks would agree with you – at least for some professions. Which ones were you specifically alluding to?

5. 5

   Brack says

   am I missing something?

   “Real estate agents lucky enough to be representing high end properties make up to $30,000 for every million transacted, as opposed to the $3000 an agent of lower end properties will make for every $100,000 transacted.”

   3% of $1,000,000 is $30,000. 3% of $100,000 is $3,000. Did you mean 30%?

6. 6

   Brack says

   never mind – just re-read it. sorry!!

7. 7

   Gooble says

   There are many public servants who earn piss poor wages for the amount of work they do. It’s the long-time government employees who are really raking it in and can never be fired… despicable.

8. 8

   One Guy's Money Blog dot com says

   I would suppose when speaking of union workers the first thing that pops into everyone’s mind it the the UAW (links 1 & 2) but I believe also auto pilots would fall into this category.

   1 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122628230122212449.html
   2 http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/lets-assume-that-powers-in-washington.html

9. 9

   Len Penzo says

   @Gooble: I agree with you, there are many public servants who are underpaid. I think there are more, though, in the other camp.
   @Guy: Clearly, the UAW benefits and salary packages were largely responsible for sinking the Big 3 automakers by making them non-competitive with non-union companies, as your second link clearly illustrates. Pilot salaries have continued to come back to earth (no pun intended) since 9/11 and the resulting impacts to the airline industry.

   That being said, I still wouldn’t replace either of those jobs with one of the others listed in my Top 10.

10. 10

    Tilde Simmons says

    You forgot wedding photographers!

11. 11

    free job post says

    Excellent blog post, I look forward to reading more.

12. 12

    Financial Bondage says

    I agree with pro athletes. No one is worth 21M dollars. I say pay them based on performance. $100k base salary, with bonuses if they play well.

13. 13

    Government worker and taxpayer says

    I work for the government and I’m well underpaid. I haven’t received a raise in 2 years. I have a 4 year degree, two kids to feed, morgage to pay, and bills. I’m a taxpayer myself. I wish non-goverment worker could just see us as people too.

14. 14

    John says

    A factual inaccuracy in your one about realtors. Being a “million dollar producer” in real estate doesn’t mean that you made a million, but rather that you sold a million dollars worth of real estate. At 3% (out of the 6% cut, buyer’s agent gets half and seller’s agent gets half), that’s $30,000. Are there millionaire real estate agents? Definitely. But they’re pretty rare and are mostly in commercial real estate, not residential.

    As far as the rest of your article goes, I agree with some and disagree with some. You tend to care too much about the “moral worth” of professions. Professional athletes and actors are paid well because studios know that having their name on the movie will make them more money. It’s capitalism at work. The fact that their work is easy, requires minimal education, or is of little moral worth is irrelevant.

    Now for hedge managers and government workers, I agree. They’re paid more than their alternatives for producing consistently inferior results.

    • 15

      Len Penzo says

      Thanks for your comments and the clarification on the high-end real estate agents, John. I feel a bit better now — but they’re still grossly overpaid, in my opinion. 🙂

      I fully understand the pay of a professional athlete or actor (or most anyone else) is “capitalism at work.” The whole point of the article was to put a spotlight on the “economic purity,” if you will, of capitalism.

      Of course, the market determines the rate of pay for individual jobs. I completely accept that and I wouldn’t want to artificially mess with the mechanics of capitalism to change it.

      I just *wish* things were different.

15. 16

    JoeTaxpayer says

    Interesting post. I think that athletes and actors are in similar situations in that there’s a supply/demand issue.

    If those $150 sport tickets simply didn’t sell, the income would have to drop. Same with movie tickets. Both jobs got bid up by people willing to throw their money at the industry. Decades ago (’40s or so) the sport salaries weren’t as inflated as they are today.

    • 17

      Len Penzo says

      Living here in LA, I can assure you there is NO shortage of actors/actresses here. LOL Athletes, yes. I wonder what, say, an average player’s salary was in the 40s after being adjusted for inflation. Got any ideas?

16. 18

    r_wills says

    I would be willing to concede most of the of the jobs you listed as grossly overpaid but I do have to argue with you about the Public Service employees.

    I am retired from retail and living on SocSec, I have never been a Public employee. The only person I can remember knowing, who was a public servant, had retired from the post office.

    It amazes me that people are willing to overpay a doctor, “To Save My Life!”, (lets be generous and guess one a day) when the nurse who does the immunization shots is saving dozens of lives everyday.

    And that goes for the sanitation worker who picks up your garbage. Every day they do their job right saves hundreds of lives. And before you think I am exaggerating, go visit some boondock country where the rich look at epidemics and famines as a useful method of population control.

    I realize most people are pretty ignorant of what goes on underneath their feet. Go to your local city hall or who has the maps of pipes and wiring and sewers and petroleum pipes and on and and on. You haven’t a clue as to how much experience is needed to sort all this out and make your life livable.

    And it is obvious that the lot of you are incapable of any sense of propriety or gratitude towards all these public employees, whose dedication and hard work are not visible to you. Of course then you have to put down the beer can your guzzling and tear your eyes away from what ever television glamour or faux glibness has you hypnotized.

    All these wealthy businessmen who whine so much about having to pay out a few more bucks in taxes, ignore how mush their businesses rely upon the civil society they despise so much. The roads, the water, the energy, all these did not materialize out of their asses.

    The public built them, the public paid for them and the public gets nothing but plutocratic insults in return.

    • 19

      Len Penzo says

      I appreciate your point of view, but that doesn’t change the fact that government workers, who now make much more compared to their non-gov’t counterparts, are overpaid. You assume that all the jobs you listed could only be done by the government — which has no incentive whatsoever to hold down costs like a private company does because they have no competition. In fact, all of the jobs you listed could be done better, cheaper and much more efficiently if they were outsourced to private industry.

      • 20

        r_wills says

        You are assuming that a private company, run by corporate bureaucrats can be more efficient then public employees. That some how lower wages, lack of benefits and abuse by executives will wave a magic wand and make it all better.

        So were is this paradise on earth you seem to believe is made so better by the innate wonderfulness of the conglomerated monopolies running everything?

        What? This heaven on earth only exists in libertarian comic books? Who woulda thought!

        Any country, you and I would actually want to live in relies on public funding of public employees creating, building and maintaining public works!

        And golly, somehow even in those “despotic social democrat states” somehow people still own their own businesses, entrepreneurs create new businesses and the grandkid, descendants of the rapacious, still keep collecting enough from their inheritances to pay for their obsession for decadence.

        Of course, I can see your viewpoint, that too many of us serf-employees may earn a decent living, keep our families housed and consumering. That we might have the gall to pretend that we are as important as your predator class, self-proclaimed masters of the universe.

        • 21

          Len Penzo says

          “Corporate bureaucrats?” Are you joking? The only place bureaucrats can be found is in the ivory towers of government. Private profitable corporations don’t have the time or money for such worthless paper-pushing nonsense.

          As for your assertions about abusive executives,and talk of a so-called “predator class,” and “masters of the universe”? It’s as if you’ve been channeling Che Guevara.

          I understand that to folks like you, government is viewed as a beneficial uncle and therefore that somehow justifies the insane pay and pensions those workers receive — off the taxes paid by those of us who work in the private sector, the only place where wealth is created.

          That being said, your public infrastructure argument is nothing but a convenient straw man. Of course we need infrastructure, just as we need limited government. So what’s your point? That, therefore, government workers aren’t overpaid? You need to try harder than that, Mr. Wills.

          Another point you seem to miss: Everybody who works for a private company, be it a large corporation or a small mom & pop shop, has the free will to leave whenever they want to and peddle their services to the highest bidder. Nobody need subject themselves to any “abuses” heaped upon them, be they real or imagined. If they hate their boss or can’t stand the job they can quit at any time and find employment somewhere else.

          (By the way, speaking of “conglomerated monopolies,” the biggest one of all happens to be the federal government.)

      • 22

        Philip says

        Len, I enjoy your blog tremendously and have been reading them from beginning to end since discovering it. I must, however, take issue with your stance on govt workers. I understand you live in California which seems to be the land of excess, especially since many of your govt examples come from there. I think that maybe for the benefit of Mr. Wills you should break it down between local, state, and federal workers. If you feel that your local and state employees are paid too much, then move so your taxes aren’t going to support them.
        I’ve spent 28 yrs in the US Army so I’m a govt employee, if you will. I’m also a taxpayer that will receive a VERY generous retirement check. Am I overpaid? Depends on who you ask: I’ll retire next June and if my DNA holds up, will draw a retirement check for twice as long as I served. If I choose I can transfer my skills to a contractor job doing the same thing I do now for the Army. The problem with that is I can choose to walk away whenever I want no matter what the situation and leave the govt in a bind. The AVERAGE govt worker won’t do that as they need the job due to low pay.
        Last, bureaucrats exist everywhere, not just in govt. Service oriented businesses these days thrive on creating levels of bureaucracy.

        • 23

          Len Penzo says

          1) Thank you for your dedicated service to our country, Philip! 🙂

          2) True, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are technically government workers, but they are in a class all by themselves. My beef is with most civilian city, county, state and federal government workers not connected to the military. (There are exceptions, of course.)

          3) I know you read my “most underpaid” article, so you know my position on the pay of our military. 🙂

          4) Although I really don’t want to, I may eventually be forced to move from my beloved native state of California. I’m hoping the citizens here will wise up, but that seems doubtful.

          5) You’re right — and I will amend my earlier statement. There are bureaucrats in the private sector, mainly in the larger corporations — but the damage they do is limited because businesses that let it get out of hand eventually become unable to compete and fall by the wayside, replaced by more efficient competitors. Not so with government.

17. 24

    Cemlyn Jones says

    Hi Len. A few years back I lived in Saudi Arabia as a contractor. Outside the city of Jeddah is this enormous crater, almost 1km diameter and around 150 meters deep. I developed a pet phrase (In the hole !!) I imagined putting all the people that I considered to be oxygen thieves and giving them a ‘bucket of sunshine’. First in there were bankers; hey, that it is our money !!, next came all lawyers; they create all the laws and then spend all of our money finding loop holes, soon after I added accountants; not for what they do but they are in a cartel with lawyers, they pass laws to say you have to have certified accounts and then charge ridiculous amounts for simply adding up some numbers. Soon after it became the norm to simply say “In the hole” when somebody pissed me off.

    So, who would you put in the hole ?? How about Top 10 for the Hole ??

    • 25

      Len Penzo says

      I just may have to do that one, Cemlyn. Thanks for the article idea. Can you tell me what type of contract work you did in Saudi Arabia?

18. 26

    Paula Jones says

    I suppose you can consider me a “public servant” since I work for a college that is state funded. Believe me when I tell you, I’m not overpaid; it’s the administration. I’ve worked here 23 years and I make $40,000 a year. Part of that income is because I worked hard, took classes, and received an increase because of it. Otherwise I wouldn’t even make that much. It’s the higher-ups who make $200,000, benefits paid for and golden parachute even if they don’t perform and are let go.

19. 27

    foodslut says

    Have you done voice acting? I never have, but having been in radio, I know “reading off the page” isn’t as easy as it seems (and in the private sector, I certainly wasn’t overpaid). Don’t know if they make a ton of money, but if it was so easy, lots more people would be doing it – and you’d be happy to listen to commercials, (or kids to video games) with boring, “Charlie Brown teacher” voices.

    • 28

      Len Penzo says

      Well, FS, I have practiced reading for some corporate videos and it’s not rocket science. Yes, it understandably takes most amateurs a bit of practice to properly modulate their tone to keep from sounding like a boring drone, and find the right cadence, but that stuff can be learned in a relatively short amount of time. I am certain some people can’t pull it off under any circumstances — but I think most can with practice. (By the way, I’ve paid voice actors too to do work for me and they do very well for the amount of work they deliver.)

20. 29

    Marek Zreda says

    I would add university administrators. With salaries many times that of university professors, they have the nerve to give themselves huge pay increases (at my university the highest was 62% over two years). They are usually useless. And they excel in one area: making money disappear.

21. 30

    Joseph Pearl says

    Re Athletes: They think their professional contracts are everlasting. They get duped into investing in unsafe investments. They have a hard time comprehending investing. They need to use the same commitment and focus they used to make them professional athletes into their investing. Additionally, many need to modify their spending before they need to rely on bankruptcy. For instance many athletes can reduce the amount of autos they own in half i.e. 10 to 5.

22. 31

    Burned Out Social Worker says

    Given the amount of education required and the amount received paid, nurses are definitely some of the most overpaid jobs. My mom brought home $98k last year, averaging 28 hours of work a week. Oh, she also took about a month of vacation on top of that. She has an associates degree. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered with a bachelors degree.

23. 32

    A Librarian, Not a Leech says

    I am a public servant, and I am not overpaid, nor are any of my coworkers. We are intelligent, capable, highly educated people who have chosen to serve because giving back to the community is our passion. Although our master’s degrees and skills would qualify all of us to work in high-paying tech sector jobs, we choose lower-paying work at your public library because we understand how much it matters.

    As a librarian, I help people stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide develop basic computer skills. I teach the unemployed how to effectively search for jobs. I support local businesses with financial and market data. I introduce at-risk youth to the lifelong joys of reading and learning. I prepare high school students for higher education by teaching them how to navigate the crush of information they find in online research. Above all, I ensure that every single member of our community, regardless of background or socioeconomic status, has equal, nonjudgmental access to the information, stories, and ideas that can change their lives.

    In addition to these job duties, I also deal every day with the pernicious effects of mental illness, homelessness, disease, poverty, and isolation that leave people with no safe, warm place to go but their local libraries.

    If an argument based on the human worth of this job is not enough for you, consider its economic worth. Libraries generate on average $4 in economic activity for each dollar in our budgets. (See http://www.hedbergpubliclibrary.org/library_value_calculator.html or scls.suffolk.lib.ny.us/pdf/librarystudy.pdf)

    Yet none of this directly profits the library, and it should not. As we are funded by all, we have no special interests or hidden agenda. We can be completely dedicated to the welfare of our community, and to the democratic ideal of equal access for all. The library is one of the last truly public places, where your ability to pay out of pocket has no bearing on how you are treated. Its soul cannot be replaced by private sector services.

    So no, I am not overpaid. I happily accept a salary well below the median for this country because I care passionately about what I do. I do not doubt that public health nurses and doctors, public defenders, teachers, police officers, firefighters, and many other passionate, hardworking public employees feel the same.

    Len, you live in a better society because people like us are willing to do this crucial work. This world is richer, fairer, and safer because of us. You should count your blessings for public servants who care so deeply about serving EVERYBODY that we will even happily serve those of you who spit on us.

24. 33

    BriarJohn says

    As far as attorneys, you don’t know shit. Many lawyers get paid squat. During my first year of practice, I was paid 25K a year w/ 25% commission on the amount of money my clients actually pay. Given that nearly a third of our firm’s business is court appointments, I’m just lucky if our clients pay more than whatever the state gives them to give to us.

    Additionally, I basically receive NO BENEFITS unless you call free parking a benefit. I pull 50k a year. It’s a fucking joke how much a high school teacher makes for 9 months work, w/great benefits, and a damn lot more job security/damn lot less job insecurity.

    Criminal defense lawyers are UNDERPAID. PERIOD. We provide an essential, CONSTITUTIONALLY guaranteed service, and we must go to another SEVEN (minimum) YEARS of school to provide. Your average attorney deserves to be able to pull 100k a year for what they do.

    Frankly, we deal with the shit that just too damn heavy for you to deal with on your own. You might pay for medical needs first, but ignoring legal ones will fuck up your life just as bad.

    Lawyers are only OVERPAID if one thinks that preserving an individuals liberty and pecuniary interest are worth ONLY 3 dollars/hour more than what you pay the guy who paid you lunch.

    My WIFE is a teacher and she jokes about how cushy teachers have it and then she turns around and bitches about why I don’t get home from work till 10 p.m. some nights.

    Law is hard work, but rewarding. I’d never still be in it if it was about the money. It’s literally one of the most under appreciated jobs because people don’t realize the sacrifices made to become a lawyer OR what it’s like to go unpaid for hours because you are just doing the right thing.

25. 34

    Dave from Pasadena says

    Some of what you’ve written is pretty reasonable and I agree. I do take exception to the public employee barb, however, especially that there is no incentive to keep costs down. While there have been some legendary cost overruns, bridges to nowhere, etc. etc., the average government employee or government contractor struggles right along with everyone else to make ends meet. There has always been, in my experience, an acute awareness of costs and of the need to spend taxpayers’ dollars wisely. This hoke-um about free spending gov’t employees is a convenient political foil for fiscal pseudo-conservatives. I say “pseudo” because when their ox is gored, they typically scream the loudest. Trust me, there are severe cost caps, limits, etc. etc. on my government contracts and INTENSE pressure to perform at or beyond expectations. So stop beating up on public sector employees–if I didn’t love my job so much (scientist) over the 30-some years I’ve worked, I could have done MUCH better financially in the private sector. So thanks for your thanks (not!) to public service employees for their work on your behalf.