at least you don't have to pick fruit

You gotta be flippin kidding me! The WSJ (We don’t know anything about Stinking Jobs or Wall Street Journal) recently came out with an article on best and worst jobs in the United States. The list is “based” on five criteria: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress. Some of the jobs positions make complete sense – however, much of the list is so distorted it is a joke.

Some of the jobs are based purely on educational background, money, and cultural appearance. Just compare a software engineer (#5) to a taxi driver (#198). It is clear that income and employment outlook are the two driving forces for these two best and worst jobs. I think the WSJ is missing a few things on their list though.

First, auto mechanic (#187), nurse (#184) are at the bottom of the list. I know that my mechanic makes more in a few months than I make the whole year. And from working at a hospital for a summer I know that all the SUV and Audi driving nurses must get paid a decent amount.***

Second, I don’t think the job scale takes into consideration hard to calculate variants such as whether or not the job is rewarding. I think that a even though some jobs are dangerous (and maybe not so well paid) such as EMTs (#196) or firefighters (#181), both are well rewarded by a job well done at the end of the day.

Thirdly, a roofer (#195) and lumberjack (#200) which are dangerous jobs, as well as low paying (~$31-$34K a year), are at the bottom of the list. There are a couple things missing here. First, there are plenty of full time workers, who may not be risking their lives, but are sadly enough being paid in the low to mid $20K range and would die to be paid in the $30K range. Second, others are working two to three jobs just to earn that much money, and working possibly eighty hours or more a week to earn that amount. Thirdly, others in this struggling economy are only able to find a part-time job, while many have lost their jobs or are unable to find one. Many of these people are attempting to support families, who are then left to try to survive on their own and face the reality of becoming homeless.

Finally, there are also two sorely missed things in this article. First, that article has missed the thousands of workers who pick tomatoes, fruit, vegetables, and other crops for mere cents a day in the United States. If we are talking about hard laborious work, low pay, and injustice, here is the first place to look. The second place to look is the illegal slave trade that is not present only in other countries around the world, but also in the United States.

The WSJ’s poor attempt at job calculating clearly misses the point of some of the injustices and wrongs of this world, along with not taking into consideration many other variants and ideas of what makes a job the best or worst.

The joke of a WSJ article

*** Please recognize that I know that not all auto mechanics and nurses are well paid.