Wage, salary and income unfairness

Most senior high school students, even though they are entering a time in their life when the career choice process should be proceeding, are remarkably uninvolved, believing that after Year 12 comes Year 13 and so on. And if for some strange reason this doesn’t happen, well no worries, their mother will simply tell them what to do. Any high school teacher will be able to confirm these sad facts. Many students can even complete their HSC, and still have no idea. They will wait until they receive their ATAR result, and then see what happens. Well I know what will happen. Their mother will hit them over the head with the frying pan—bing, bong, bang—and then tell them what university course to take. Thank you, mum.

One aspect of this non-involvement, confusion, and lack of real choice is ignorance about income, wages and salaries. I have never met a single student, for example, who knows how much money their teacher gets or their school principal, even though this information is perhaps only four or five clicks away on the Internet, and despite the fact of many students wanting to know. Indeed increasingly the students I teach are asking about how much money they can make, and so over the course of time I’ve been getting together a little list.

How much do husbands need to earn?

Many high school girls imagine that they will be a fashion designer. The truth is that this is an area where there is an oversupply, and also there is serious competition from overseas. This means that a new graduate in the design area might start work at say $42,000, which is about $20,000 less than a new graduate might start work at one of the big four accounting companies. Even good designers are unlikely ever to earn more than about $80,000, less than a teacher. This has implications for home loans.

I hope that your son or daughter wouldn’t be bored with these statistics. If so here’s one which might be a little more interesting. It seems that the husbands of 40 per cent of married women earn more than $100,000. Unfortunately a growing percentage of young men, perhaps 20 per cent or even higher, do not successfully transition to adulthood. They remain marginalised, dependent upon their parents in a variety of ways. Some even continue to live at home, in the same bedroom, with the same teddy bear. Well there’s not much chance in that of having a wife and family and leading an independent and growing existence as a successful family unit. Statistics also show, if you look beyond the Hollywood nonsense, that men and women with the highest income also have the lowest divorce rate. It’s simple to understand—young, capable and hardworking men and women marry, and then just get on with it.

The truth about some career areas

In terms of income, salary and wages there are a number of important generalisations that need to be discussed and worked through with your son or daughter. It might be nice following dreams, but in the meantime bills have to be paid and expenses have to be met. So here we go. First, occupational areas that require a long and difficult preparation generally pay a lot more, such as medicine. Admission to some areas are best served with combined degrees, and these take longer. These days a six month TAFE course can be disappointing in salary outcomes.

Second, some career areas are paid less than other career areas, even though the preparation might seem similar. A good example of this is nursing and teaching. A nursing degree is the same length as a teaching degree but I think far more difficult. The responsibilities are also a more arduous, and yet teachers, at the end of the scale, earn about $89,000 in a public school. Nurses, doing general duties, only earn up to about $70,000.

For a more dramatic example consider a flight nurse, working with say the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This man or woman will be a registered nurse and midwife. Additionally he or she will have qualifications in aviation medicine, trauma medicine and remote area medicine. It is possible that the flight nurse arrives on the scene without a doctor but will have to deal with a serious car crash for example, with people, and bits of people, all over the place—a whole set of medical emergencies. The flight nurse may even have to undertake lifesaving surgery. How much money is this worth when compared with a teacher? Sadly the salaries are similar, though the starting point is better.

Let’s take another example of what I call unfairness. Consider the director of a play centre, a person in charge of say 10 staff, and responsibility for perhaps 50 children, ranging from six months to four-years-old. Many of these children will be little monsters, hell-bent on running, jumping and climbing, screaming for absolutely no reason, hitting each other, again with no reason, and having a variety of injuries. Although the care centre has toilets some of these pre-humans much prefer to use the floor or playground.

Half the children need a special diet because they are allergic to just about everything. Years ago children were tough, and could eat dirt for their playlunch, but those days have gone. When the director is not worrying about these things there are the parents to deal with, professional training of staff, support for special needs children, liaison with about 15 government instrumentalities, business reports, workers compensation, superannuation arrangements, the child centre website—but I’ll stop.

So how much money is all this worth? The answer is about $90,000, the same as an ordinary classroom teacher, managing about 25 children who can generally sit on seats for more than 60 seconds, can speak in words not screams, take themselves to the toilet, and actually follow instructions. Classroom teachers mainly only have themselves to consider, not all the other teachers, or the cleaners. There are no school finances or government reports to consider, well actually almost nothing.

Working with people

Third, the ability to work effectively with people is highly rewarded. Consider that a civil engineer starts on about $50- $60,000 and then might progress to between $80-100,000. On the other hand a project manager, who may well know far less than an engineer about a building, will be paid $120,000- $240,000. The reason is that a successful project manager can get a blue team, composed of idiots, to work effectively with a green team who are in therapy for anger management, and also with a red team, a bunch of sub-humans who haven’t even reached the Stone Age and communicate with grunts and gestures. The project manager is able to deliver the project on time and on budget. This should be obvious—the CEO of BHP probably doesn’t know that much about making steel. It’s all about what can be accomplished through other people.

Working in private enterprise and working for yourself

A fourth principle is whether you are working for the government, private enterprise, or are self-employed. The principal of a large public high school would get about $153,000. If you move that same person to a large private school the remuneration would be $250,000-$360,000 made up of a base salary and a range of benefits. Some years ago this actually happened. The principal of North Sydney Girls’ High School, one of our better selective schools, resigned to take up the position at Ascham, a private girls’ school. Doubtless this woman was dedicated and loyal to her students, parents and teachers. But she was then able to move to a position where she was remunerated in line with her ability and performance as a top professional educator.

A cleaner generally receives either the minimum legal wage in Australia or slightly above. This is about $17 an hour or say $34-45,000 per year with some overtime. However if this cleaner decides to become self-employed, and pops into the local real estate agency offering to clean an apartment, he or she might receive $300 or more. Of course some equipment will have to be purchased, a vehicle to cart rubbish, and another employee will have to be paid, but the general prospect is a lot better. Maybe this enterprising cleaner could net say $69,000 a year, significantly more than our minimum wage employee cleaner. In this country over one million people are self employed.

Only the top performers get the big money

Lastly, some careers are not as well paid as you might think. Only the top performers get the really big money. Consider medicine. A general practitioner employed by a medical centre, earns after costs, about $220,000 on average, but the top end of the earnings range might exceed $350,000. A senior barrister, or a QC, might gross thousands of dollars a day but a solicitor working at a low level may earn not that much more than a teacher receives. Your son or daughter needs to consider carefully where they might fit, and where they can excel, and what they like. A reasonably good solicitor might earn more than a poorly paid doctor who has spent more than double the preparation time, and met a far higher entry standard. The solicitor mainly deals with pieces of paper and information on a computer screen. The people he or she deals with in chambers or the court room, although irritating and sometimes upset, generally don’t raise their voices too often. The doctor on the other hand has to stick needles into people, look into people’s mouths and bottoms, and sometimes make life-or-death decisions—and do a lot of hand washing.

Meeting girls at Sydney University

So, a few basic facts of life need to be communicated to your son or daughter. If your son for example would like to meet girls, then why not enrol for a course at Sydney University. The gender divide there is 57 per cent girls, 43 per cent boys. There is no need to go to any trouble to meet these attractive young women. Your son only needs to just stand anywhere inside the campus. With a total student population of about 55,000 that’s 31,000 girls walking past. Oh, for most courses at Sydney University the average entry ATAR is about 85 and the average requirement for a professional degree is about 95.