I think that’s the thing, it’s not that amazingly well paid. Considering it only requires a high school diploma and a certificate it pays well, but overall you’re probably only making around $38-55k per year. I did find some exceptions such as the upper end of NYC techs making $65k, but even LA had a high end of $55k. Maybe the salary data I saw was wrong, but that’s not particularly well paying.
The high paying job is the Pharmacist who is probably pulling in $120-160k, but the tech is doing all the real work.
This guy probably looks at it like they aren’t conventionally attractive (which isn’t true) and they aren’t making stupid high salaries.
From personal experience, that pharmacist salary is offset by insane pressure from management to meet metrics that keep going up and requiring a fair amount of unpaid overtime put in to keep the queues from overflowing.
Then you’ve got a 50:50 chance of a new tech being insane and or stupid because the good ones have long since burned out. They usually are union, though, so good for them.
There’s a reason pharmacists in the US are starting to drop dead on the job.
I think that makes a weird sort of sense. I mean, if you’re gonna pay 1 person 3x what you pay the others you kinda expect them to shoulder more of the burden. Same goes for Doctors in general and Air Traffic Controllers, the barrier to entry is exceptionally high, the pay is high to match, but the expectations are even higher
I can’t speak to the union bit, but I would say most aren’t in a Union in the US since most of the US doesn’t have Unions. If you’re in an area that has them then maybe they get a better deal.
It’s not that the techs do all the real work. There was a time when pharmacists kind of let that happen, but it was a short and long gone era. Now pharmacists must also work hard and we as a team pull together doing the same job to make it happen. Every day is a huge challenge for the whole team-the corporations ensure that’s how it works.
For the workload, pharmacist salaries should probably be smaller than they are and tech salaries should probably be higher than they are. Pharmacist student loans of $250k+ don’t really support that though. It’s a tough situation.
Your first paragraph lines up with my experiences at my local CVS. There’s a hub and spoke model where the pharmacist is in the center constantly checking things while the techs have to branch off to get the drugs as well as deal with the customers at the counter. And the customers at the drive thru. Aaaand the customers on the phone.
And every single one of those customers is asked “do you have a question for the pharmacist?” As they should, of course! But I could see questions coming up at inconvenient times. Because of course they would.
I give them credit. Healthcare techs are underpaid.
It’s a tough situation.
In terms of power dynamics over who is treated with value and who isn’t in modern society then yes it is a different situation to fix, however in terms of complexity this is a very simple situation.
- Tax the rich
- Pay Pharmacists and Pharmacy Tech jobs a living wage
- Hire more employees to reduce the workload.
Not quite that easy but I agree in general. I would have to add:
- cap school costs to a % of expected income
- continue to pay pharmacists more than techs to incentivize the lost years of wages for school, but decrease how dramatic that pay difference is
- All jobs should pay a living wage as a minimum. Those with a bit more responsibility for people’s lives should also come with an incentive for the increased difficulty, so pay the techs a bit more than the minimum, or no one would want to do it.
Techs do currently make (barely) a living wage in my county. But by that I mean the living wage on MIT living wage calculator, which is BARELY enough to get by. No vacations or any frills. Just not getting further behind every month.
in terms of complexity this is a very simple situation.
- Tax the rich
Leftist moment rofl. Next, I will share my simple solution for world peace:
- stop doing war.
For comparison, that’s roughly equivalent to 3d animator salaries in the game industry. First year out of college, you can expect somewhere around $40k a year ($60k for programmers), and you probably don’t see anything in the six digits until you start getting to team leads and other senior level positions.
I can’t speak to your numbers, but using the same salary comparison searches I used for the Pharmacy Tech position it looks like 3D Animator pay is somewhere between $50-105k national average with LA being $98-150k and NYC being $45-110k. Maybe game industry specific is the cause for your lower numbers?
Could be. I did a quick search before I posted to make sure my numbers were still relevant, because $40k is what my college professors who were working in the industry told us to expect when we graduated, and that was in 2010. What I came up with in my search was $38- 110k national average and I assumed that the upper end of that is more senior level positions and more specialized roles, as the game industry is notorious for low wages and long hours. There were stories coming out a few years ago about employees for Blizzard who were living out of their cars because they couldn’t afford rent within commuting distance of the studio in Irving, for example.
But my point was that that’s a profession that often has a 4 year degree attached that has comparable wages to a pharmacy tech. So not the worst salary range for a high school diploma and certification - though I think both fields deserve to be paid much more.
Yeah it’s one of those things and why we really need to start fixing things. You don’t expect someone whose job is so important that people will die if they mess up or quit to be paid so low. It’s like when you find out ambulance/EMT make less than people who work at Target.