[tptacek]

Nursing and teaching are surprisingly well-compensated fields with lots of job security and relatively straightforward entrance requirements. It's also true that both fields are valorized, but plumbing isn't and has the same dynamics. These arguments are all overdetermined.

[decimalenough]

This depends wildly on the country, but in many, public school teachers are criminally underpaid.

Nursing is also a hard job where the paycheck is nowhere near what doctors can earn.

[tptacek]

Very few professions in the world earn anywhere near what doctors can earn.

[beedeebeedee]

That may be true elsewhere, but not in the US

[wisty]

Not hugely so. Teaching isn't paid megabucks but that's partly because it's a market for lemons - it's hard to tell a good one from a bad one (and people don't even agree in what it means to be educated, are facts or "critical thinking" more important, how about discipline vs temporary comfort) so there's no high paid super stars.

There is a stereotype that teachers are low paid. Somewhat .... but there's a slight premium on doing meaningful work.

The whole premise that women are paid far less is kind of wrong anyway (or at best another outdated stereotype).

Childless men and women make about the same amount.

Women with children work fewer hours and share finances with men who work more hours, and apparently this is an injustice.

[tptacek]

Outside of low-population rural school districts, the idea that teachers are poorly paid --- at least for the last 30 years or so --- comes from people not understanding the value of a defined-benefit pension plan (and, if you want to go that far, that people don't understand the interplay between an annual salary and a huge number of days off work).

[wisty]

I think the holdiays are offset by the nature of the job - even the lasiest teachers actually have to show up and work, they don't just type "camera issue" in a WFH meeting then watch Netflix (or do something just as pointless and lazy in a face to face meeting).

If you're comparing teachers to nurses, sure nurses tend to have more pay but more hours and harder work. But most jobs that you can do with a BA in English (or any other degree that isn't either extremely competitive like medicine, or in a really high demand field right now), teachers get (at least) similar pay, for a similar amount of work (albeit compressed into the school calender). Especially if you consider benefits, as you point out.

[tptacek]

I think it's wild that the basis for comparison you have here is remote software developers in meetings. You know that everybody who works retail, manufacturing, hospitality, warehouses, and construction has to show up and work the same way, too?

Yes: the kinds of people commenting on HN have it easier than just about anybody in the work force. That doesn't make us a reasonable bar for assessing the attractiveness of a job. Would you rather work as a teacher or a truck driver?

[wisty]

60% of the US workforce is professionals. There's more office jobs than just web dev.

[tptacek]

Could you be more specific? I don't know what you're referring to.

[mold_aid]

Almost certain OP is referring to the fact that nurses and teachers are not well-paid or respected in the US, which I'd like to note as well. Despite this, Public Health as a pseudo-STEM major nearly ranks with STEM fields in general for majors seen as "workplace-ready."

Maybe there are too many English majors (I honestly think the supply of careers is too low). But I think the "supply is greater than the demand" is possibly now more an explanatory argument for unemployment rates for Engineering and PT and other such quiescent majors. Certainly there are plenty of Ed majors for a field whose workers fled at pace earlier this decade.

Let's assume I'm teaching 25 or so Engl majors right now in a class with publishing as its central focus (hypothetically) at a state school. The students would neither be able to define "small press" nor name the big 5 - even the ones who just came back from AWP. The linked piece, I think, correctly names the romanticized vision of publishing that is divorced from understandings of the cost of living in NYC. I don't also think that college majors are actually all that itchy to get into editorial, whether or not they're all and every single one applying for the same pool of jobs.

[tptacek]

If the claim is "nurses and teachers are poorly paid in the US", that claim is broadly false. K-12 teachers in major metro areas in the US have surprisingly generous comp packages: well above area median take-home salary with predictable ladders, very good benefits, and defined-benefit pension plans.

There are school districts where teachers are poorly compensated, but they aren't the norm over the population as a whole. Teachers are generally well-compensated.

Nursing, I don't know where to start.

[djoldman]

Folks may talk past each other on this.

Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE NOT well-paid because those workers deserve to be paid more than they are.

Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE well-paid because they are generally paid more than median wage.

As for some dry facts, median wages:

  Registered Nurse $93,600

  Public School Teacher $64,000

  Private School Teacher $57,600

  All U.S. Occupations $49,500

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm

[tptacek]

Complexifiers for teaching: K12 cash comp in major population centers (CPS, SFUSD, Philly, MSP, &c) is sharply higher than that median, and, more importantly, teachers get a huge amount of non-cash comp. Can't say enough how valuable a defined-benefit pension is. All-in comp for a lot of rank-and-file K12 teachers in major metros is competitive with software development (in those regions; obviously excluding SFUSD).

[mold_aid]

>that claim is broadly false.

No, sorry, no, it is not "broadly false." K-12 salaries enter at average 40k often with a requirement to enter a graduate program within five years. I don't see that teachers in most states have received substantial increases in salary over any considerable period. They are underpaid.

Compensation rates are not "surprisingly good" (surprisingly?). Both groups merit much higher compensation. Your subjective consideration of "well-compensated" may differ from mine and fair enough, but I find generally one's position is more an index of their political beliefs (or sentiments towards unions in general) than any objective standard of what is "surprising" ("a retirement plan? In this economy?).

[tptacek]

You can just pick a city and Google median/mean salary for their school district to see that this isn't true. For what it's worth, the median cash compensation salary in my own high school district is six figures.

The smirking "a retirement plan" comment you made leaves out the important bit: it's a defined-benefit plan. The point isn't that teachers shouldn't have defined-benefit pensions. The point is that those pensions are extremely valuable, and not at all a market-rate perk in the broader economy.

It's easy to win an argument with a straw man saying "teachers are overcompensated". It'll be harder for you to contend with the argument I'm actually making.

[gopher_space]

> well above area median take-home salary

For someone with masters-level education and years of experience?

[tptacek]

No.