Nowhere Careers

Since the pandemic (I should say while in we are in the pandemic, as it seems to never end) there has been a big shift in working attitudes.

I returned to office work in optometry after a two-year hiatus. We had a student optometric assistant working for us during the summer. She told me that only ten people are enrolled in that class at school.

At first, I was surprised. Working in health care used to be considered prestigious, and certainly a reliable career, you will never be unemployed.

However, these jobs are nowhere jobs.

I think the prestige is still there, but there is nowhere to go once you are in that job. There is no job advancement save, perhaps, a yearly salary increase (even that is increasingly rare) and maybe an opportunity to be office manager.

You start off at minimum wage. You work long, often thankless hours. You take a lot of abuse. Health care careers expose you to a lot of diseases, a lot of unpleasantries and witnessing suffering that you can’t always alleviate.

And you will probably never earn more than $20 to $30 an hour and work a lot of unpaid overtime.

This is not very attractive to a young person looking for a career.