Depressingly lower-middle class jobs in the USA

Definitely social workers

postal worker

waitress/kitchen workers

shipping/receiving

almost every and any temp job

working for jeff bezos the kabillionaire at any Amazon outlet.

Nurse and realtor are solid middle class jobs mostly.

Is there a cut off for income fornlower middle class, OP? That will determine a lot of my picks.

[quote]Realtor

"How very fucking DARE you, OP! There is nothing lower middle class about me!"

Flight Attendants make very little money. Only good for young women in search of a gainfully employed future husband.

Posting of stupid threads on Datalounge (like this one). Very depressingly lower-middle class ..

Pasta drainer.

Nutloaf baker

You seem dismissive of these jobs, OP. They are the backbone of America, especially nurses. And realtor? I'm close friends with one and he hasn't made less than $400,000 per year for the last decade.

It’s funny, my neighbor’s wife is an ICU nurse. She works 3 days a week and makes 80K a year. I wouldn’t call that lower class or depressing. Her husband is a realtor, and while I don’t know how much money he makes, I know that my neighborhood is quite pricey.

There’s money in nursing and real estate, and they both seem to be doing very well.

[quote]Flight Attendants make very little money. Only good for young people in search of a gainfully employed future husband

Also smuggling drugs. A lot of FA make good money smuggling drugs. It's a win/win: they are paid well and they are also performing a public service !!

What's your occupation, OP?

Health care workers other than RNs or doctors/dentists. (LVNs, home health care aides, receptionists, etc.)

Teachers.

These are all working class jobs outside the US.

Nursing can be a rung on the ladder. We have lots of nurses in my family. My late aunt started out as a nurse and worked her way up to be an executive and on the board of of a mid-sized hospital.

Another cousin is going that route, and she was definitely on the trashier end of the family. She’s smart and bossy, and she’s managing a team at a big pediatric practice. She makes good money.

[quote] These are all working class jobs outside the US.

No, R17, they're not.

Yes, R19, they are.

Nope, R20, they're not.

Girls, girls, stop fighting and explain to me the difference between working class and lower-middle class jobs.

Thanks.

[quote]waitress/kitchen workers

[quote]shipping/receiving

These are blue-collar jobs. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

OP, what do you do for a living?

Warehouse production; security officer; cashier; grocery bagger; dish machine operator; casino worker; retail stocker; picker/packer; custodial; landscaping labor

A lot of you are equating salary with class. I know some nurses can make a lot of money, but social class is determined by more than salary: prestige, education and lifestyle count just as much.

Professional sportsmen can be multimillionaires but will never be upper class.

Also many of these jobs are flat out working class: warehouse jobs, retail etc

Archie Bunker worked on the loading dock, i.e., shipping/receiving. Does [italic]All in the Family[/italic] seem to you to depict a middle-class family?

Some blue collar jobs pay very well, (mechanics, electricians, plumbers etc..) often better than some white collar jobs. Waitress/kitchen workers and shipping/receiving jobs are more unskilled labour than blue collar though, R23.

Local TV on air-talent and reporters.

Specifically, any television station not in the top 30 markets.

A lot of people in HR and accounts payable are lower middle class too

R15, In many states, LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) is LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse).

BackPage Rent Boy

Nurses make good money- would not say they are lower middle class. Some start at 80 grand, and many make more than that.

I get it with some of these, but for some others there's a little bit more than meets the eye. Especially if you figure in geography.

"Definitely social workers"

Social Workers must have graduate degrees and a good chunk of them are also psychotherapists. Like my husband. He makes just over six figures in the DOE as a school social worker and also has a private practice near NYU, where he charges $175 session. He sees 11 clients a week. Granted, I know his situation isn't typical -but most of his colleagues are doing similarly fine.

We also get full healthcare (for life) and benefits through his union, and he will have a pension of 1/2 his salary plus the proceeds of a guaranteed 7% return investment fund that he has been shoving money into for 13 years (he will have close to a million when he retires in 11 years).

Our best friend is a surgery nurse. With a little overtime and few extra shifts she makes at least 125k a year.

Another friend is a realtor. He has never made less than 200k a year. Usually over 300.

And a friend from high school - total blue collar heavy metal dude who was in the marines then became an electrician - lays wire for big buildings. He has a few guys working for him and pulls in a solid six figures.

All of these people except the last have at least a bachelors degree and grew up solidly middle class.

R30 a friend had two job offers at $7.50 an hour, fast food worker and radio station DJ. He took the job with more "prestige." Now he's a local celebrity.

School teacher

K-12 teachers: low salaries in many states, crappy benefits, crappy children and their worse parents screeching at you all the time. Add high-stakes testing, constant bureaucratic interference, and endless dull professional development seminars, and you have one shitshow of a profession. I have friends who do it, and I don't know how they survive year in and year out.

Damn, I should make so much as the nurse that lives next door. Dude rakes in $127k a year and will make more as a phlebotomist.

[quote]OP, what do you do for a living?

I am a high priced "escort." I used to be a rent boy but I took some classes at community college and I moved up the ladder. I'm living the American dream. My ultimate goal is to become a porn star but I need to lose a few pounds first (about 50#)

The camera adds weight ..

Sanitation worker.

Toilet sniffer

I wipe old people's asses at the Bus Depot. It's a wonderful opportunity to help people and sometimes I find things on the floor.

Literally every “middle class” job is depressing. If you aren’t the 1%, or the other top 9% who do all their bidding, you are getting royally screwed. Resist and revolt, people. The real class warfare should be directed UP, not down, like most in this thread are doing.

Stripper in an Assisted Living Facility. I have a boom box and lots of costume changes like Cop (lady you're under arrest) and a Construction worker (lady you have to cum with me}. I adding a new Cowboy "personality" (lady you have to move along little doggy). But I don't have all my cowboy stuff yet so I'm improvising with some empty toilet paper rolls and some paper napkins (use you're imagination).

This is a great opportunity for me to display my artistic qualities and release inhibitions in a nurturing, caring environment. I love my clients.

I like to ask for money at bus stops

Animal Panhandler

[quote]K-12 teachers: low salaries and shitshow of a profession. I have friends who do it, and I don't know how they survive year in and year out.

Three months off in the summer plus lots of other holidays ..

There are plenty of depressing upper class jobs as well. Who the fuck wants to be a doctor or lawyer? All the people I know in those professions are absolutely miserable and owned by their jobs.

The title of the thread isn’t “depressing lower middle class jobs. It’s “depressingly lower middle class jobs.”

As in, lower middle class lives are depressing.

[quote]There are plenty of depressing upper class jobs as well. Who the fuck wants to be a doctor or lawyer? All the people I know in those professions are absolutely miserable and owned by their jobs

Yeah - can't wait to get stoned on coke a buy a hooker.

Nurses make way too much money to be ‘lower middle class’

Being a nurse is a great job. Tremendous variety in the work available and treated good by employers. Also as mentioned pays well.

[quote]The title of the thread isn’t “depressing lower middle class jobs. It’s “depressingly lower middle class jobs.” As in, lower middle class lives are depressing.

OP - if you have to explain what you mean it wasn't worded well Add some hyphens or maybe an emoji or a visual of you with a pointer and a blackboard (you can wear a silly hat!)

Again, OP, what do you do for a living when you’re not bitching on DL? Do you live in your parent’s basement?

R26, no they are not “upper class”, but they are solidly middle class: my white cousin the nurse is married to a man who is some sort of financial consultant with a big firm. They have a nice house in a nice neighborhood, they take nice vacations, they’re not tattooed, they don’t wear uniforms, they have college degrees. Their kids will go to private schools and be another rung up the ladder.

Don’t be mad that some lower middle class people are being productive and making a better life for their kids.

I don't know R50- I know some high-end tech types in San Francisco working for dot coms raking it in getting the most outrageous benefits and they seem to love their jobs.

[quote]what do you do for a living when you’re not bitching on DL? Do you live in your parent’s basement?

Does everyone have to live in the basement? There are attics you know. Lots of people live in attics. Also the garage. Lots of people live in the garage - or a tent in their parents back yard. "Do you live in a tent in your parents back yard?" There - wasn't that deliciously funny. Damn - I'm still chuckling !!!

R26 nailed it. Here is the late critic Paul Fussell on the topic:

[quote]If you reveal your class by your outrage at the very topic, you reveal it also by the way you define the thing that's outraging you. At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle, people grant that money has something to do with it, but think education and the kind of work you do almost equally important. Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education.

OOOOOH! I want to live in a garret! DL garret-dweller! Sounds classy and artistic while being fundamentally pathetic. Perfect!

....

[quote]At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle people education and the kind of work you do almost equally important.

I don't want to work too hard and I want lots of money. I think that makes upper-lower or lower-middle ..

OP = idiot

Most of the cunts on "Girls" had gross lower-middle class jobs. Lower middle class jobs require a BA - BS and pay shitty. Maybe there are long hours and unpaid work,. Or government jobs where the hours are great but the work is soul killing and there's only a promotion future for 10% of staff.

Living in a van down by the river

I know a few dentists who hate their work. Coincidentally , they became dentists because their father's were in the profession. I suppose these are upper-middle class jobs, but yuck. Who wants to be looking into people's gaping maws and Fruity Pebble-shaped teeth?

So what OP? Because certain professions have more minorities and woman in them, they less than other jobs? You sound like a stupid bigot.

Are you Erna?

OP your comment at R51 doesn't help.

There must be some of those"oh dear" folks reading this thread. Isn't using the adverb "depressingly" just wrong in this sentence?

Are these "lower" or "lower middle"?: rental car counter worker, storage unit facility manager (there are a LOT of gays in this industry, surprisingly), supermarket department manager, veterinary assistant.

R63, I imagine the desire to get lots of money without having to work too hard for it is universal!

Fussell didn't mean that wanting money and leisure marked someone as lower class. Rather, he meant that a person's definition of the term "class" could reveal their own position on the social ladder. The more someone thinks it is about income, the lower that person was probably raised.

To situate myself in this conversation, I was raised in what the OP would call the "lower-middle class," and what Fussell prefers to call the "high-proletarian class." (Why? Because he argues that the lower-middle class no longer exists, "having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s" and now "in bondage to... rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast foods, consumer shlock.")

The examples of high-prole jobs that he offers are tradesmen and craftsmen, nurses ("prole women who go into nursing never tire of asserting how professional they are, and the same is true of their daughters who become air stewardesses"), doormen, firemen, and railway conductors. Although some time has passed since the publication of his book, I think the underlying principles are solid.

Plumbers and electricians have some of the best jobs in the US - especially when they can work for themselves, set their own hours (often just not show up based on my experience ) and get paid really well. I have a middle class office job and consider many trades as a better lifestyle and often as much if not more money.

Whereas working grueling hours on Wall St or tech under constant stress with an assumption of total devotion to the job is hell on earth. But it’s well paid. But of course you would never hear someone saying “depressingly upper middle class job” - because in America it’s all about money and it’s assumed if you have money, you are happy. Which is false - beyond $70,000 year (or two $35,000/ year jobs)

I actually agree with you, R72, and I think the author would, too. He was raised middle-class, and that's where his most merciless observations are aimed. The high proles, on the other hand, he describes as the aristocrats of their own tier:

[quote]Because often their work is not closely supervised, they have pride and a conviction of independence... and their disdain for the middle class is like the aristocrat's from the other direction. One high prole says: "If my boy wants to wear a goddamn necktie all his life and bow and scrape to some boss, that's his right, but by God he should also have the right to earn an honest living with his hands if that is what he likes."

I do believe that freedom from supervision is precious, and that, although the work world is changing fast, the best of the high-prole jobs still offer it.

[quote] and treated good

oy vey

Chaturbate performer

Why not spell out proletariat? Prole sounds derogatory to me

I don't either term applies to the US today. In simple terms a member of the proletariat is someone whose only possessions of real value is his/her labor.

In the US today race, class and government interference all impact wealth accumulation.

I think OP is trying to claim either being lower middle class will make you depressed. Or the jobs you may will make you depress. I think that is just wrong. But before discussing any further I'd like OP to provide some examples and supporting evidence for his position.

Private dancer

Interesting thread. I’m not American and here it is perfectly acceptable to do whatever interests you and there’s no pressure to for each generation to outdo the next. I became an English teacher because I loved reading and loved “playing teacher” since I was a tot. My brother is a total outdoorsman who spent his 20s in the US working in the National Park system and now he manages an outdoor store and takes tourists on guided hikes in the summer. I’d actually never stopped to consider our class or how we’d done relative to our parents until I read this thread. I feel sorry for both the kids and the parents stuck in that “system” in America. Feeling that your life is just blah as you’re not good enough but it’s okay because you’re sending your kid to a private school and damn it he’ll be a doctor or a lawyer. And the poor kid having to likely suppress his true interests to please the parents. Is there a ceiling on this? I mean what do doctors want the kid to be, another doctor? Or does it then become just money so a doctor wants their kid to go into tech and make as much money as humanely possible? I admit it’s all confusing to me and I’m glad I’ve never had to live in that system.

I dont agree on nurse and realtor. Nurses in a large city (RNS) can make 70k or 80k plus per year and realtors all depends.........LA/NY and you are hellishly good and have been doing it a number of years you can be pulling down well over a million a year.

R78, thank you for providing your perspective. Most Americans aspire to be upper-middle class, and doctors have traditionally been upper-middle class, so for a child of a doctor to become a doctor is perfectly acceptable. However, there would probably be pressure to "improve" things with each succeeding generation: If, for example, the parents had gone to public school, the child might be sent to a private day or even boarding school.

No, I don't think there's a ceiling on American insecurity or ambition, which go hand in hand. Our relative historical newness has fooled us into thinking that class doesn't exist here the way it does in, say, England, and we don't have the same sort of language to talk about it. But it does exist, of course. And I think threads like this are healthy, because they let us drag these hidden social codes out into the light.

Thanks r80. That’s the most confusing thing as an outsider is where is the end goal. Is there such thing as contentment and it seems there isn’t which is far more depressing to me than someone being an air hostess or a nurse. I get the impression from reading DL than having a six figure income, a nice home and an education still isn’t enough. Heck I’ve seen people here earning 120,000 + call themselves lower middle class. It makes me wonder what an average family with a household income of 60,000 think when they hear that a household of 2 nurses earning close to 200,000 is lower middle class, fit for the depression heap but might get lucky and have a kid who’ll do better. Dare I say it might make them pissed and desperate enough to look to the Cheeto in chief. And I say that as someone who would be considered a blazing red commie by most Americans. I don’t know if it’s no country for old men but it’s certainly no country for poor or average men. I think you desperately need a Democratic candidate who can connect with the average American who doesn’t want their kid to go to an Ivy League school or have more toilets in their future homes than people, they just want them to earn a living wage. And double dare I say that might be someone who upper middle class white people in urban areas don’t really “get”.

RNs (registered nurses) get paid well and are always in demand. LVNs and CNAs get paid less.

Pharmacy technician

R78 I love your comment. I’m a parent and try very hard to ignore the rat race and not pressure my kids, but if I’m being honest it matters a lot to me. In my little bubble of the Upper East Side, there’s enormous pressure for kids to be academically successful. Even if you don’t pressure the kids, they feel it from their peers. Kids have serious stress over getting a 94. Should have been 100.

It doesn’t matter how rich you are; there are only certain acceptable ways to get rich. Did you make a fortune in plumbing supplies? Pffft. Realtor making a million a year? Leech.

R12 Oh honey ONLY 80,000 stop embarrassing yourself and Karen walker.

Got It nurses make bank got it👌Move along

So what are the acceptable professions on the UES today r84? What do people want for their kids? Is it still a closed ultra white community or has it become more diverse and accepting? Do people make any effort to mix with “regular” people or have their kids mix with “regular” kids. I feel like it would be very easy to become totally detached from the real world there.

R78, that’s not the “American” system, that’s just one or two people on DataLounge’s system.

R12 if nursing was instead dominated by men OP wouldn't have put it on the list.

Nursing like teaching, as I understand it, Is a great job at first but becomes soul crushing after 20 years. Do all jobs?

I didn't know it paid so well to judge others.

What's that? You heard the mailman and need to collect your welfare check?

America is not supposed to have a class system. In reality, when people spout middle class, they mean working class 90% of the time. Almost no one in America is truly middle class.

[quote]Local TV on air-talent and reporters. Specifically, any television station not in the top 30 markets.

One reporter on CTV Atlantic News in Halifax, Nova Scotia is constantly complaining ON AIR about how little money he has. It's become predictable whenever there's a conversation about travel or anything that he likes or would like to do but "I can't afford it." He manages to be such a buzz kill with profiled stories/features.

Now we know why Ted Baxter was such a cheapskate, R93.

Americans who talk about money all the time are trash even if they are loaded.

Adjunct Professor.

All of the work.

All of the student debt.

None of the living wages or benefits or union protections.

The only people who don't think classes exist in the US are middle class white people whose families have always been middle class. They are having a growing awareness of the class structure in the US when they realize just how expensive it is to send their kids to university.

Again this idea that there is pressure for the next generation to be as well off if not better off than the current generation is a white middle class idea. The data doesn't support this being the trend today.

For our "not American" friend there is no pressure for subsequent generations to improve upon previous generations in other countries because the class system is no entrenched it's not eve considered a possibility.

As far as nurses are concerned a nurse maybe someone with an RN who has an associates degree. Primarily providing direct patient care. Then there are RNs who have a BSN or an MSN providing complicated and detailed patient care plans. Or playing critical roles in ERs and ORs. Then there are PhDs who not only teach but run the nursing programs a huge hospitals.

I love how one American above specifically says that they live on the upper East side, but a non-American gives no indication whatsoever of what country they live in.

Op and others remind of Fox News when they tried to shame that actor from the Cosby Show who worked at Trader Joe's. The reporters were justly identified as tasteless. The same applies here. NOTHING identifies you faster as being trashy and tacky than this sort of talk,...as being on the same page as Fox News, for goodness' sakes!! Trying to shame or classify people by their work is not something people with taste and class do imho, but carry on. There IS no shameful work, as the French say. American. Trash.

The most depressing jobs involve sales, customer “service” or working in a call center which should be the real punishment handed out to convicted criminals.

R99, I agree that the shaming of the Cosby Show actor was reprehensible. That doesn't mean I can't also believe that social class in America is a topic worthy of discussion. You're assuming that OP was punching down, but we don't know anything about his own class. Perhaps he is lower-middle class, frustrated with his life, and needed to vent here on DL this week.

Social class exists in the U.S., no matter how much we wish it didn't. You seem to think that talking about it is inherently insulting to anyone on the lower rungs of the ladder. I disagree: I think that refusing to talk about it plays right into the hands of the upper class.

I think referring to these positions as middle income, or lower income jobs is preferable to inserting the word class. There are many working in these positions who are not of the lower-middle class. This classist viewpoint just fosters enmity between people, and elitist notions that these people are beneath our respect, or even somehow contemptible. I have known many educated and happy flight attendants and realtors in my time. Whether they are depressing occupations or not is up to the individuals in these positions.

Sorry I was the non American. I live in Cork City, Ireland.

Nurses in Canada, especially in Alberta, earn very high salaries. New grads are paid a minimum of $61k/year. Registered nurses make minimum $132k/year

Selling hot dogs on the streets

What’s happened to academia with adjunct professors is unbelievable. I held professors in such esteem when I was young and aspired to be one. It wasn’t until I reached university that I realized how miserable my professors were, at least the decent ones who loved to teach and had some spark of humanity. The ones who did best were, with a few exceptions, slick egotists who seemed built to flourish in beauracracies. This was in the early ‘90s.

I drifted into a completely different field (nursing, funnily) and, because I liked teaching, took a job as a clinical instructor. I did one day per week for pleasure and a little extra money, but other adjuncts (English, mathematics, sciences) I got to know made their livings as “freeway flyers,” teaching large course loads at more than one school for little money, no benefits, and no job security. This also happens in large, prestigious universities. It is DISGUSTING, absolutely exploitive, and made even worse by the fact that universities pride themselves on being progressive. It is just rotten.

My brother in law has this insecurity thing going on. He has a degree in accounting, which alone, is an accomplishment- but has passed himself off as a (non-practicing) CPA for 30 years. The only reason I even notice the distinction is that I dated an accountant when he was studying for the CPA exam. I don’t think anybody in the family cares about his for accounting life, except that we don’t like or trust liars. The longer I’ve known him, the more I realize he lies reflexively. If you don’t do that yourself, it comes as a surprise, and now I feel like a fool for having believed whatever nonsense he was slinging at the time.

He’s a Deplorable, too. Financially, the family is doing just fine, but it seems that he thinks he deserves more and better. Not that he actually wants to work for it, though.

It’s really true that, above your basic necessities, money simply doesn’t buy happiness.

I agree with the poster upthread especially taking exception with Social Workers. I have known two here in the US personally and they were both from upper crust families. One was from an old money RI family, and it was a tradition amongst women on her mum's side to go into this profession. Both were Ivy League graduates and ran private practice therapy on the side. They both seemed to do quite well for themselves and enjoyed their work.

I considered becoming a teacher - certified and everything, but it does not pay enough. So, I stay in IT making twice as much. More people would be drawn to the profession if it paid more money.

I have no idea how it works in other countries (non-US) today. Historically, you were born into a class and stayed there, right? Even born into your father’s job?

In the US, historically, you could move jobs more easily than in Europe, as I understand it. If you couldn’t, then you went West, and started over. That’s something you couldn’t do in Europe.

Since 1635 in the US, my family has been mostly poor, fisherman, artists, or workers in shoe factories, but there were also some generations that somehow accumulated money and property. Ship builders, shippers, manufacturers, some land. Most of the wealthy ones lost it by illness, or having it divided by too many children upon their deaths.

Did you know in the 1700s, people might be “willed” certain rooms within a house, with others getting the other rooms? People must have better known to keep their mouths shut in those days, lol.

Education is no guarantee of a comfy life, but it’s hard to be comfy without it.

No, Gates and Zuckerberg do not count. They’re the exceptions that prove the rule. I mean for the great mass of people. Even a carpenter needs to know basic geometry.

Not only is education not a guarantee of comfort, it can be a liability because of debt.

R95 Does that include self made?Just checking for a friend

In all seriousness for those NOT from the Us.Many do tend to be spoiled Americans but also know many of us live on credit.And we spend,spend and spend instead of saving.Teaching is rewarding and nursing is rewarding

I sell oranges on the freeway off ramps and pull in $4-5K a day. I only work weekends, and only from 8A-2P. Call me what you will, but I work about 40 weekends a year and net between $100-150K... tax-free. It can get pretty hot in the sun some days, but I live in sunscreen and a hat.

Upper East Sider here. “Acceptable” professions are medicine, law, academia, PR, finance. Making $30k per year as an assistant curator at a museum in the neighborhood is preferable to making $300k a year as a master electrician.

To whoever said teachers get 3 months off in the summer: That's not true now. It's more like 8 or 9 weeks, and many teachers find summer jobs during that time so they can make ends meet. Many of the other holidays through the year are spent trying to catch up on grading (planning periods are often taken up by required tutoring of students or other professional development activities). It's a soul-sucking profession and they are not paid enough.

R116 gets it

Are there any other countries where the spawn of the wealthy “graduate”’ from prestigious universities with double digit IQs? Maybe England?

RN is considered a good job on Long Island, NY. The nursing union is strong there, some of them make six figures. In my opinion nurses should be well compensated for the work they do anyway. It’s a tough job obviously and they’re fearless.

[QUOTE] Upper East Sider here. “Acceptable” professions are medicine, law, academia, PR, finance. Making $30k per year as an assistant curator at a museum in the neighborhood is preferable to making $300k a year as a master electrician.

Sadly this is true. Just like the flyover kids who come to live in NYC, it’s acceptable for five of them to cram themselves into a substandard tiny apartment in a trendy area . Renting a larger place solo beyond the boundaries of Brooklyn or Queens marks them as social outcasts.

A nurse is not a low paying job.

Not sure where you are but I've seen no minority Realtors. I don't know how much they make but ever other white woman I know is a Realtor.

r49, it's 2 months off in the summer, yes holidays off are great also. Many have this crazy drive to help our next generation learn something. Lot of young teachers go in full of ideas about how they can make a change. Some are successful, some quit and some stay on jaded and not caring for the days off.

R116 & R118 sadly don't "get" life's lessons, nor the meaning of life. Both are "not acceptable" people in my world view.

Assistant crack whore is lower middle class but not assistant to the crack whore. The latter is low class.

R125 = Assistant crack whore.

NYC cubedweller, Duane Reade employee. Jobs NYU grads have.

Cashier at high-end funky boutique is acceptabke at 18k per year. Cashier at Duane Reade at 18k per year is ghetto and unacceptable to an NYU grad.

NYU grads 1. Statistically do not take Duane Reade jobs and 2. Statistically do not remain in such jobs. People without college degrees have fewer chances of advancement.

this thread is the depressing part

I understand adjunct faculty look mistreated when compared to their tenure track colleagues. But are they really when compared to the job market at large?

^^^ even the students treat them with disdain, particularly SJWs who might object to an unpopular position. Adjuncts are low hanging fruits for them, though. Their prey are the tenured ones, nothing they like better than to force an apology out of one of them.

fast food worker

janitors

standing on corners waving a stupid sign with an arrow on it

working at any landfill

Most Americans find their jobs depressing in some way because in America we make our whole lives about our jobs.

OP has no idea what nurses do or how much we make.

America is very depressing that way, R134.

Many adjuncts make less than McDonalds when you factor in lesson planning time, prep time, grading, etc. Though more intellectually stimulating perhaps, from a pure wage basis, adjuncts are paid shockingly little. The schools suck out thousands of dollars in tuition and pay pennies to the actual instructors.

It’s a crime - particularly the for profit companies. Obama finally tried to go after them but Betsy DeVos of course reversed everything. Students take out tens of thousands of debt - and 80% goes into profit for the private equity overlords leaving nothing for actual education.

R129 is an NYU grad. Works at 2nd Ave CVS instead of Duane Reade

I skirt along the edges of middle class in terms of my income. Lower middle class in terms of my spending habits. However, because I have an advanced degree, spend my life with books, art, music and theater, and am a professional musician and teacher by trade, people treat me as upper class, and I am routinely invited to socialize with people in that bracket. I just smile sweetly as they tell me about their month long vacations in Paris, or their treks to Machu Picchu, their latest Alaska cruise, or the new yacht they bought to explore Puget Sound or Baja California. They understand on some level that I'm much poorer than they are, but they want me at their parties, expecting witty conversation and the latest gossip about the music or theater world (that's one of the reasons I come to DL). It's something of a mystery, all in all.

Nurses have pretty steady middle class incomes. But, nurse's aides are usually lower middle class incomes.

Private nurses make lotsa $.

Nurses can walk out of college with an associates or bachelors degree and make $70 to $80k a year. I left a corporate job making about $115k a year to go into nursing. One year I made $130k working at two hospitals (full time and per diem). I stopped doing that and make about $90k a year. More important than the money, I love going to work everyday. It is usually intensely demanding, challenging, stimulating and rewarding....cognitively and emotionally.

We all know that “nurses” are whores.

R142 you tempt me. That’s exactly what I always thought - but am scared I will hate it and burn out . Is it too late at 47.

R144, I did it at 50. I would strongly dissuade anyone of any age to go into nursing.

When I was a kid I thought TV newscasters had to have other jobs too, because they only worked for 30 minutes.

City sewage

R139 gets it

R124, I’m just making an observation about this little bubble, not a value judgment. I’d be thrilled if one of my kids became a master electrician.

[Quote] Like my husband. He makes just over six figures in the DOE as a school social worker and also has a private practice near NYU

R35 What does this mean? Does he make seven figures? Does he make high end or low end six figures?