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The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S.
misbach writes "Here is what the 'compensation experts' have to say are the
ten most
overpaid jobs [original article at CBS MarketWatch]. 'Almost no one in America would admit to being
overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
'Fair compensation' is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and
executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't
be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.'"
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Almost no one in America would admit to being overpaid, but many of us take home bloated paychecks far beyond what's deserved.
Fair compensation is a relative term, yet human-resource consultants and executive headhunters agree some jobs command excessive compensation that can't be explained by labor supply-and-demand imbalances.
And while it's easy to argue that chief executives, lawyers and movie stars are overpaid, reality is not that cut and dry.
Corporate attorneys earning $500 an hour and plaintiffs lawyers pocketing a third of a class-action or personal-injury settlement certainly don't go hungry. Yet many local prosecutors and public defenders are hard-pressed to pay off law-school loans.
Hollywood stars, making $20 million a movie or $10 million per TV-season, qualify for many people's overpaid list. But for every one of those actors and actresses, there are a thousand waiting tables and taking bit movie parts or regional theater roles awaiting a big break that never comes.
A lot of people are overpaid because there are certain things consumers just don't want screwed up, said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com. You wouldn't want to board a plane flown by a second-rate pilot or hire a cheap wedding photographer to record an event you hope happens once in your lifetime.
With pro athletes, one owner is willing to pay big money for a star player and then all the other players want to keep up with the Joneses, Coleman said. The art with CEO pay is making sure your CEO is above the median -- and you see where that goes.
What follows is a list of the 10 most overpaid jobs in the U.S., in reverse order, drafted with input from compensation experts:
10) Wedding photographers
Photographers typically charge $2,000 to $5,000 to shoot a wedding, for what amounts to a one-day assignment plus processing time. Some get $15,000 or more. Yet many mope through the job, bumping guests in their way without apology, with the attitude: I'm just doing this for the money until Time or National Geographic calls.
They must cover equipment and film-development costs. Still, many in major metropolitan areas who shoot two weddings each weekend in the May-to-October marrying season pull in $100,000 for six months' work.
Yet let's face it; much of their work is mediocre. Have you ever really been wowed flipping the pages of a wedding album handed you by recent newlyweds? Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon they're not, but some charge fees as if they're in the same league.
9) Pilots for major airlines
Captains with 12 years of experience earn up to $265 an hour at Delta, United, American and Northwest, which translates to $250,000 a year and more for a job that technology is making almost fully automated.
By comparison, senior pilots at low-fare carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue make about 40 percent less. That helps explain why their employers are profitable while several of the majors are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The pilot's union is the most powerful in the industry. It commands premium wages as if still in the glory days of long-gone Pan Am and TWA, rather than the cutthroat, deregulated market of under-$200 coast-to-coast roundtrips. Because we entrust our lives to them, consumers accept the excessive sums paid them, when it's airplane mechanics who really hold our fate in their hands.
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Next year, West Coast dockworkers will earn an average of $112,000 for handling cargo, according to the Pacific Maritime Association, their employer. Office clerks who log shipping records into comput
This article seems slashdotted, but there's a similar (same?) article on the CBS site: Ten most overpaid jobs in the U.S. .
Also, check a search on Google News
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Wedding photographers! My god what a racket. I worked for a online wedding photography company and the top photographers contracted with us made $40-60k PER EVENT. One photographer I won't name routinely charged $40k for events that he didn't even bother to show up at. He sent an assistant. I am not making that up.
And what do you get for that price? That's right. NOTHING. They show up and shoot. But they make you pay for the prints. >$10 a pop. And if you want an album? Well...thats gonna cost extra.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
They ignored how pilots actually get paid. It is based ENTIRELY on length of service with their current airline. When they start. it is around $13,000 a year (yes, really). And don't forget they often have to pay back for flight school. The longer they serve, they more they get paid as they move up ("seniority"). Their career can be instantly over failing the six month physical/medical. And that isn't failing like ordinary folk would. The health standards are significantly higher. Oh, and if they have to leave an airline while earning $250,000 a year and start at another, they really do start at $13,000.
The pay is definitely broken, but it isn't really apparent how to fix it. If they were paid on timely arrivals or lack of crashes, then there would be an incentive to buck the system to improve those in dangerous ways. They can hardly be blamed for maintenance, weather, in flight emergencies with passengers or any other "performance related" means. So seniority/length of service it remains.
So why do pilots fight so hard for their pay. Simple. When you have been making $13,000 a year and growing slowly until you eventually hit bigger numbers many decades later, you feel like you have earned it. And all the pilots who have put in a decade at low pay don't want the future rewards they have sacrificed for taken away. You should also be aware that very few pilots earn those big bucks.
Check out the series of articles "Ask the Pilot" on Salon which goes into way more detail. Quite frankly you would be insane to become a pilot for the money.
8) West Coast longshoremen
In early 2002, West Coast ports shut down as the longshoremen's union fought to preserve generous health-care benefits that would make most Americans drool. The union didn't demand much in wage hikes for good reason: Its members already were making a boatload of money.
Maybe they make too much money. But ports shut down because of a lock-out, not a strike. Everyone that writes about this and wants to paint them in a bad light casually fails to mention that. If the Pacific Maritime Association feels that the Longshoremen's Union has too much of a stranglehold on the ports, perhaps they should consider that the PMA has too much of a stranglehold on the ports. Monopolies suck. Amen. One monopoly has managed to take money from the other monopoly. You think consumer prices would fall if the PMA managed to break the union?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The money that doesn't get spent gets put into some sort of financial instrument, which then is put back into the economy in the form of money that can be used as capital. It certainly doesn't just 'dissapear' unless the owner keeps it all in larg bills under their mattress.
Somewhere there ought to be a comparable list: jobs you assume are worked by well-heeled professionals, but that are actually basically full of blue collar people who're doing it for other reasons. Pilots are there because they like the work. It sure as heck isn't the money. Paramedics -- you think they're in it for the money? They get hardly anything for the job they do, those people are in it for something else.
(I'd rather read my imaginary article, frankly. This one's just a bitchy, demeaning piece of pop tabloid crap.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Geez, I'm a wedding photographer and I WISH I were making $400-$1000/hour. Let me see, I usually spend about 3 hours with the bride before the wedding going over the shot list, eight hours at the wedding, and then another 40 hours or so after the wedding processing, retouching, editing, and color correcting the photos and then designing the album. Man, if I could pull in $1,000 an hour, I'd make $51,000 per wedding! Damn, that would pay off my $40,000 in photo equipment in one week, plus pay for my health insurance, studio rent, and advertising, and help me save for retirement! Oh, well, I guess I'll have to slog along here at $2k ~ $3k a wedding...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Negotiate to get the negatives and contact sheets at the end of the gig, and go make your own prints.
We ended up with a wedding album that's the envy of every couple that sees it, and we spent around $500 total. Oh, and having the negs makes it easier to archive the negs and slides on a CD-ROM.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Professional athletes aren't government employees, so the government doesn't have any say in how much we the people are willing to pay them. If we follow your logic, why don't we take some of the cash from the bonehead CEO's who don't deserve what they get, or rich kids who don't ever work a day in their life. They obviously don't deserve the money they have.
Just because you don't see the value of entertainment sports provide doesn't mean the rest of us should be punished by having less motivated less qualified athletes.