In the summer of 1999, after a month of mostly unsuccessful job hunting, I accepted a job waiting tables at Cracker Barrel in Bellmead, Texas. It was one of the hardest and most stressful jobs I’ve ever had. I actually went home and cried on my first solo night. It wasn’t all bad, as I describe in “A Note at the Table”, but overall I hated it and quit within six weeks. In exchange for my nightly punishment, I made $2.15/hr plus maybe $5-6/hr in tips for a total of $7-8/hour with no benefits other than a discount on food during my shift.
Another summer I worked at a day camp in Coppell, where I made $10/hour taking care of kids all day. It wasn’t a bad job. I liked many of the kids. We got to spend time outside on most days. The job had stressful moments and a horrible boss, but I didn’t dread going to work each day. That’s a huge plus in my book. All told, it was easier, caused less heartburn, and paid better than waiting tables at Cracker Barrel.
Why?
For years now a question has troubled me: what is the true value of a person’s work, and how does it compare to his/her actual wages?
As a general rule, the market assigns a value to a person’s work based on many factors, including level of responsibility, skill and experience requirements, and supply and demand for workers. Depending on the job, an employee might receive a fixed wage for the position, possibly determined by a union contract, or negotiate the wage with the employer. A self-employed person sets his or her own wage, striking a balance between personal needs and business needs.
I can’t help but think that a person’s work must have a more real value than what the employer is willing to pay. I just can’t figure out how to determine that value. The following factors are worth considering:
Difficulty
Should a more difficult job pay more? My gut reaction is a strong YES. In the Dallas area, I would say construction is one of the most difficult jobs, especially in the summer. Washing dishes and bussing tables at a restaurant might be another. All require hard, physical labor with minimal breaks. However, for various reasons, these jobs pay very little. An extreme example is a stay-at-home mom like my wife, who works hard throughout the day, every day, for free.
In contrast, some jobs are easier overall but pay much better. My current job is one of the easiest I’ve held but also pays the best. It has difficult moments, for sure, but I normally have some downtime every day and the stress is manageable. I’m also in a office rather than outside in the blazing Texas sun.
I see little correlation between difficulty and pay, and it bothers me.
Responsibility
Should a job with more responsibility pay more? I would say yes, and in practice, this seems to be the case. Many of the high-paying jobs in our society involve high levels of responsibility. Physicians preserve their patients’ health. Attorneys fight for their clients’ financial and personal interests. Business executives make decisions that affect the success of their companies. Jobs with low levels of responsibility, in terms of impact on others’ lives, seem to pay less. Entry-level jobs such as waiting tables, flipping burgers, and lawn care don’t pay much, but if a waiter messes up an order, no one dies or loses thousands of dollars as a result.
Qualifications
Should a job that requires higher qualifications pay more? Again, I would say yes. In some cases, such as physicians and attorneys, being more qualified brings a worker more money. However, even strong qualifications don’t guarantee high wages. Due to high unemployment, many recent college graduates are unable to find work in their desired fields, forcing them to take lower-paying jobs for which they are overqualified. Even master’s degrees in certain fields, such as English (shut up, I know!), don’t generally lend themselves to high-paying jobs in the way that a business or engineering degree might. Thanks to union contracts, a laid-off airline pilot with 3 decades of flying experience would start as a junior first officer at a new airline, perhaps making $30-40k in the first year.
Supply / Demand for Workers
Should a low supply of qualified workers relative to demand produce higher wages? I think so, and it seems to work out in practice. Nurses, for example, are in high demand due to our ever-growing population, but the limited number and size of nursing schools keeps the number of qualified nurses low. As a result, nurses make good money and have little trouble finding jobs. Manual labor jobs have the opposite situation. Although demand is high for workers in fields like construction, the low qualifications for those jobs make the supply of workers large, especially here in Texas where so many Mexican immigrants work. Employers in these fields don’t pay much because they don’t need to. Airline pilots, although highly qualified, are much more numerous than the available positions, allowing regional carriers to treat their pilots like dirt and pay them peanuts.
Since our union is currently negotiating a new contract, the issue of wages is on our minds. The union will argue that we deserve much more than we get, and that we deserve big raises because the other labor groups at Southwest have gotten big raises over the last few years. The company will argue that we already make more than dispatchers at nearly every other airline. Which side is right? How much is an hour or a year of my labor worth? How much is your labor worth? I don’t think there’s a clear answer.
What are your thoughts?