Professions that have peaked

[YttriumNitrate]

Surprised to see "pilot" mentioned several times.  Other than an understandable pause at the beginning of Covid, the airlines seem to be hiring like crazy.  It's one of the reasons that the military is facing a pilot shortage--people can get out and have a job almost immediately, and one that makes more and has a better QOL by most standards.

I mentioned pilots earlier, which was mostly because of some friends talking about the decline of working conditions.  I don't think it was the pay, so much as a combo of bad employers (the major passenger airlines) and bad passengers.
They've all remained pilots.  Some do cargo flights, and some do private passenger charter work.  All are very happy with the move away from the big passenger airlines and being around the general public.
Pilots might be an example of a job that's still great (you fly planes for a living!) but has peaked in the sense that it's not what it once was on some important dimension.

There's also a big difference between flying for a regional carrier and one of the majors. Factoring in non-flying hours, some younger regional pilots make close to minimum wage. 

[Michael in ABQ]

Appraisers are on my sh*t list right now. We are moving and paid $500 to the appraiser hired by the credit union.  There were so many stupid errors on that appraisal, including the notation that there is no parking or garage on the property when, indeed, there is a detached garage and a driveway.  My name was spelled incorrectly throughout, and there were numerous mistakes that show the appraiser didn't pay attention and basically phoned in the appraisal.  Since our LTV is so good, the appraisal doesn't affect our loan at all, so we are not rocking the boat, but still, it steams my beans that we paid good money for a shoddy job.

Yeah, unfortunately this happens all too often. I'll bet if you looked up that appraiser you'd find they've probably only been licensed for a few years. Also, they probably only got paid $250 of that $500 which means after expenses they were making $15-20/hour - not exactly the rate of a professional.

At least on the commercial side the barriers to entry are very high relative to the reward. Bachelor's degree, 300 hours of classes, a pretty difficult licensing exam (not quite on the level of the Bar exam or CPA exam but still challenging), and 3,000 hours of work experience under a mentor. The last part is the hardest. Not a lot of people want to train their future competition unless it's a large company.

[carolina822]

This was funny: "Anything in the arts" - but it was gone a long time ago, probably never even got a chance to peak. Haha.

Hahah.

Anything in the non-technical (non scalable) arts was what I meant.

Any bloke doing basically anything can be wildly successful. Certain professions just tip the odds more so in your favor over others, which I think is the point here.

Ex: average SWE vs average makeup artist
300k vs 80k
Guaranteed work vs gig work
Near unlimited open roles vs limited roles
30hrs/week vs 60hrs/week
Work from home vs commute / travel
Etc etc

Do some makeup artists make 3M/yr? Probably. But if you plot the distributions of any given profession across a range of features, the winners will stand clearly out. Plot it over time and you can see when one has peaked vs one still being in a growth phase.

Apply monet-style to a picture of your dog.
https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/models/blob/master/research/nst_blogpost/4_Neural_Style_Transfer_with_Eager_Execution.ipynb

Oh good grief.

If we're going to compare careers against obscenely paid software engineers in specific parts of the world, then pretty much every career looks stupid.

Family physician? Dumb job, makes less than SWE in the Bay Area
Lawyer? Also dumb
Teacher? Sooooo dumb
HR director? Beyond dumb
University professor? Why bother?
Chef? What are you even thinking?

See what I mean?
To criticize a perfectly valid arts career just because a certain group of software professionals make a lot more is just silly. The vast majority of careers can't live up to that, it doesn't make them invalid or shitty careers.

I stand by my previous statement that now is actually an excellent time to be a creative professional.

Also, if you think makeup artists aren't making 3M a year, I think Jeffrey Star might have a thing or two (or over 200M) to say.

Not criticizing, just pointing out which professions have a higher likelihood of success, for the average worker. Lots of paths to success.  The best apples:apples here would be to compare a fresh grad across industries, and look at the AVERAGE salary/benefits/happiness.

Not everyone can be a 0.00000001% 200M Jeffrey star or a 0.0001% 700k Bay Area SWE. But on average, SWE/tech (anything STEM) seems to be one of the better professions now and likely into the future.

Do you think the average person with an aptitude for makeup artistry would have similar aptitude for software engineering (or anything STEM) if they'd just made a different choice in what to focus on? I'm pretty smart and reasonably tech-savvy and I couldn't be a SWE if you paid me a million dollars a day to do it.

[BoonDogle]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

Doesn't appear to me that the need has peaked.  It would, if politicians had the guts to simplify the tax code enough so that the average person could do their own tax return but that doesn't seem to be a risk anytime soon.  The bigger issue with accountants is that fewer and fewer graduates want to sign up for 60+ hour weeks during part of the year.  For many Accounting Firms, that goes well beyond just tax season.  Then, afterwards, if your Firm does audits, you get to spend several nights a year away from home on audits.

[Edubb20]

Government employee or CEO  will be the only job left in 50  years and that'll last until the mother brain AI will grows powerful enough to do it all herself.

[Villanelle]

Surprised to see "pilot" mentioned several times.  Other than an understandable pause at the beginning of Covid, the airlines seem to be hiring like crazy.  It's one of the reasons that the military is facing a pilot shortage--people can get out and have a job almost immediately, and one that makes more and has a better QOL by most standards.

I mentioned pilots earlier, which was mostly because of some friends talking about the decline of working conditions.  I don't think it was the pay, so much as a combo of bad employers (the major passenger airlines) and bad passengers.

They've all remained pilots.  Some do cargo flights, and some do private passenger charter work.  All are very happy with the move away from the big passenger airlines and being around the general public.

Pilots might be an example of a job that's still great (you fly planes for a living!) but has peaked in the sense that it's not what it once was on some important dimension.

By the way, I started by offering lawyering and academia as professions that have peaked.  By most standards, I think pockets within those professions are still pretty fantastic compared to most work.  It's just that they typical person within those professions likely has a flat to declining career outlook over the coming decades.

Makes sense.  Different definition of "peaked" than I was using--working conditions vs. just ability to get/keep a job.

Right now it seems like very few people spend much time at a regional before getting called up.  To be fair, every last one of the people I'm familiar with already had a lot of flight time (military aviation) so regionals were either skipped altogether or were fairly short term (and usually that was rotary wing people who needed a bit more fixed wing time). 

[skuzuker28]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

Doesn't appear to me that the need has peaked.  It would, if politicians had the guts to simplify the tax code enough so that the average person could do their own tax return but that doesn't seem to be a risk anytime soon.  The bigger issue with accountants is that fewer and fewer graduates want to sign up for 60+ hour weeks during part of the year.  For many Accounting Firms, that goes well beyond just tax season.  Then, afterwards, if your Firm does audits, you get to spend several nights a year away from home on audits.

CPA here, demand is higher than ever.  Definitely having trouble finding graduates with realistic expectations with regards to hours and compensation. We have a 2400 hour a year expectation.  We are willing to hire for fewer hours a year, but the salary offer reflects that.  I'm only 33, but I'm finding myself muttering "kids these days" more and more often. After all, why shouldn't they get $90k a year out of college with full benefits and only have to work 1800 hours a year (with 200 of those being vacation of course)?

I think it has a lot to do with the labor market they are graduating into.  Rather than than having to compete for open positions, firms are competing with each other to hire.  That is a pretty foundational shift in the employee-employer relationship at a critical moment in their life.  It will be interesting to see what happens when the pendulum swings back (as it tends to do).

We've been raising rates to compensate for increases in compensation costs, and I'm sure we'll find equilibrium somewhere.  Hope it's soon, because I'm getting tired.

[wageslave23]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

Doesn't appear to me that the need has peaked.  It would, if politicians had the guts to simplify the tax code enough so that the average person could do their own tax return but that doesn't seem to be a risk anytime soon.  The bigger issue with accountants is that fewer and fewer graduates want to sign up for 60+ hour weeks during part of the year.  For many Accounting Firms, that goes well beyond just tax season.  Then, afterwards, if your Firm does audits, you get to spend several nights a year away from home on audits.

There's two sides of it.  The supply side is that being an accountant sucks and nobody wants to do it.  And most CPAs are in their 60s and retiring.  The demand side is that tax software is starting to compete with actual tax preparers, it doesn't do it right but laymens don't know that so they won't pay more for a CPA than for the software, so its keeping prices from inflating in order to retain experienced CPAs and/or draw in new talent.  So you have a perfect storm of burnt out old CPAs looking to retire, pissed off middle aged CPAs (like myself) looking to switch careers or FIRE, and college students who wouldn't touch taxes with a 10 ft pole, and employers who are desparately trying to find qualified, experienced CPAs for a salary that still allows them to make a profit but is probably 20% less than what it needs to be to attract the dwindling candidates.  What you end up with is a lot of EAs without proper education, working for minimum wage when you figure in all the extra hours, and they make a lot of mistakes because they don't understand the laws behind the tax code.  So yeah the whole career is going down the drain.

ETA: software isn't even the real competitor yet, but someone looking for a 20+ yr career? You better plan on being closer to an IT professional.  The real competitor to experienced, knowledgeable qualified CPA's is the person working out of their basement churning out tax returns as fast as they can enter the data.  They charge half what a professional in another industry would charge and produce terrible work that isn't peer reviewed.  The client doesn't know this and sees the tax return as a compliance based commodity to be shopped around.  The experienced CPA can either cut corners in order to compete or work for a lot less per hr then they are worth. 

[GodlessCommie]

All are very happy with the move away from <snip> being around the general public.

This seems to be a trend that extends far beyond the airlines.

[tedman]

This video is a bit long in the tooth, but events have only accelerated since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Just posting to say, while I think this movie is clearly explaining the future... it seems like Watson was\is terrible at the whole doctor thing. There was a big article in the Times about this and how I believe the conclusion was it was more or less a huge waste of money from a business perspective (im trying to find the article but the Times search function sucks.)

[Luke Warm]

I hesitate to call the top on any industry, though some futures are easier to predict than others. For a long time, the Occupational Outlook Handbook predicted that the demand for Drafters would dramatically decrease, but then this changed to a slight increase, now it's a slight decrease. I've checked off and on for almost the past decade. I've always though it would be a fun job that pays my bills minus all the mental energy and constant learning required in software, but I don't have any experience to be certain. I was really good with Autocad back in my high school drafting class, though, so I think I at least have the aptitude, but then again, a lot of people do.

This all reminds me of the dangers of expertise. Although expertise can earn you big bucks, it's also generally fragile and has diminishing returns, requiring exponentially more investment relative to reward as depth of knowledge increases. Gotta stay somewhat flexible, I guess. Software isn't decreasing anytime soon, I don't believe, but I always ask myself what I would do if I had finally had enough and walked on it. Diversity of jobs is good, I really hope that doesn't decrease in the future.

i've been doing civil drafting for over 20 years. i can't see the drafting part going away but i can see dedicated drafters being kicked to the curb. right now we can't find anyone to do my job so i guess no one is getting trained for it? a lot of companies now rely on the engineer to do the drafting.

[Paper Chaser]

Just saw this article about "Top 5 most valuable bachelor's degree fields vs bottom 5" and it echos some of what's been said in this thread:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/here-are-the-five-most-valuable-college-majors-.html

[thesis]

I hesitate to call the top on any industry, though some futures are easier to predict than others. For a long time, the Occupational Outlook Handbook predicted that the demand for Drafters would dramatically decrease, but then this changed to a slight increase, now it's a slight decrease. I've checked off and on for almost the past decade. I've always though it would be a fun job that pays my bills minus all the mental energy and constant learning required in software, but I don't have any experience to be certain. I was really good with Autocad back in my high school drafting class, though, so I think I at least have the aptitude, but then again, a lot of people do.

This all reminds me of the dangers of expertise. Although expertise can earn you big bucks, it's also generally fragile and has diminishing returns, requiring exponentially more investment relative to reward as depth of knowledge increases. Gotta stay somewhat flexible, I guess. Software isn't decreasing anytime soon, I don't believe, but I always ask myself what I would do if I had finally had enough and walked on it. Diversity of jobs is good, I really hope that doesn't decrease in the future.

i've been doing civil drafting for over 20 years. i can't see the drafting part going away but i can see dedicated drafters being kicked to the curb. right now we can't find anyone to do my job so i guess no one is getting trained for it? a lot of companies now rely on the engineer to do the drafting.

Good to know. Thanks for weighing in!

[Us2bCool]

This may be a bit more obscure, but I'm a software trainer. Over the course of my career, I've seen the demand for instructor led training to dwindle to almost nothing as it's replaced by self-paced and online learning. My job is secure; my role is now 90% development of training material and very little delivery. It works fine for me because at 54 the travel was getting pretty tough.

[DadJokes]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

The need hasn't peaked. The incentive to be one has.

The pay doesn't match the workload, and new accountants are more aware of that than ever before. It's difficult to pay a tax accountant an amount that matches the workload, because clients don't want to shell out that much money on tax preparation.

[ChickenStash]

Telecom: It used to be that every medium company needed at least a few folks on staff to manage the phones/PBX/voicemail/call-centers. Nowadays, particularly with WFH being a big deal, most companies are migrating to a unified communications platform of some type (Cisco Call Manager, MS Teams, etc) that pretty much replaces all that telecom gear. The UC platforms still need people to work them but there is a significant retraining/learning curve for the new systems and I see a lot of the techs in that field not transitioning well.

Server/App admins: A lot of apps are moving to "the cloud" as managed services where the old responsibilities of the app analysts server owners of yesteryear to do server or software maintenance is dwindling with the managed services vendor taking over the work in some fashion. It's great because it means the vendors usually have to fix the crappy code and upgrade processes that plagued the admins and ticked off the users but it means a lot of those labor-hours are going away.

[Log]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

[oldmannickels]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

Doesn't appear to me that the need has peaked.  It would, if politicians had the guts to simplify the tax code enough so that the average person could do their own tax return but that doesn't seem to be a risk anytime soon.  The bigger issue with accountants is that fewer and fewer graduates want to sign up for 60+ hour weeks during part of the year.  For many Accounting Firms, that goes well beyond just tax season.  Then, afterwards, if your Firm does audits, you get to spend several nights a year away from home on audits.

There's two sides of it.  The supply side is that being an accountant sucks and nobody wants to do it.  And most CPAs are in their 60s and retiring.  The demand side is that tax software is starting to compete with actual tax preparers, it doesn't do it right but laymens don't know that so they won't pay more for a CPA than for the software, so its keeping prices from inflating in order to retain experienced CPAs and/or draw in new talent.  So you have a perfect storm of burnt out old CPAs looking to retire, pissed off middle aged CPAs (like myself) looking to switch careers or FIRE, and college students who wouldn't touch taxes with a 10 ft pole, and employers who are desparately trying to find qualified, experienced CPAs for a salary that still allows them to make a profit but is probably 20% less than what it needs to be to attract the dwindling candidates.  What you end up with is a lot of EAs without proper education, working for minimum wage when you figure in all the extra hours, and they make a lot of mistakes because they don't understand the laws behind the tax code.  So yeah the whole career is going down the drain.

ETA: software isn't even the real competitor yet, but someone looking for a 20+ yr career? You better plan on being closer to an IT professional.  The real competitor to experienced, knowledgeable qualified CPA's is the person working out of their basement churning out tax returns as fast as they can enter the data.  They charge half what a professional in another industry would charge and produce terrible work that isn't peer reviewed.  The client doesn't know this and sees the tax return as a compliance based commodity to be shopped around.  The experienced CPA can either cut corners in order to compete or work for a lot less per hr then they are worth.

Seconded the tax profession has burned through people the last two years. No one coming in, everyone looking to leave.

[DadJokes]

Seconded the tax profession has burned through people the last two years. No one coming in, everyone looking to leave.

It also doesn't help that deadlines have been constantly extended over the last couple years due to covid. Busy season has been never-ending.

[Apples]

On the topic of accounting - is the decline mostly happening for tax accountants at firms/by themselves who focus on individual returns or returns for very small businesses?  I ask because our family farm is a medium-sized business and we deeply depend on our extremely knowledgeable accountant and the firm she works for.  There are a lot of moving parts on the return, and they raise their rates every year, as they should.  I have no idea what kind of hours they have to work at that firm during tax season, but it can't be more than 60 a week based on conversations we've had.  Working in ag, our harvest usually goes 55-60 hours a week, so I know that can be draining, but it's for a set period of time each year.

[HPstache]

Real estate agent and maybe pharmacist?  TBH, I don't know much about the pharmacy profession, but it seems like an automated system must be close to taking over by now... or maybe people would just be too uncomfortable with a non-human pharmacist doing all the things pharmacists do?

[MudPuppy]

What do you think a pharmacist does that could be done by machines?

[oldmannickels]

On the topic of accounting - is the decline mostly happening for tax accountants at firms/by themselves who focus on individual returns or returns for very small businesses?  I ask because our family farm is a medium-sized business and we deeply depend on our extremely knowledgeable accountant and the firm she works for.  There are a lot of moving parts on the return, and they raise their rates every year, as they should.  I have no idea what kind of hours they have to work at that firm during tax season, but it can't be more than 60 a week based on conversations we've had.  Working in ag, our harvest usually goes 55-60 hours a week, so I know that can be draining, but it's for a set period of time each year.

Many of the tax deadlines were extended the past two years, so it resulted in longer then usual busy periods. Combined with helping clients with all the new tax laws (PPP, ERC, lingering changes from TCJA, etc.) it led to two prolonged busy seasons. That seems to just now have ended, but many are just burned out at this point.

[HPstache]

What do you think a pharmacist does that could be done by machines?

Store, count, dispense prescribed drugs.  Check for drug-drug interactions and drug-disease state interactions using AI.  I think there will need to be a human involved for a while longer, but the question is which professions have peaked... I think Pharmacist is one if it hasn't already.  Again, not particularly knowledgeable about the profession, it popped into my head because I remember Jonathan from the ChooseFI podcast who was a pharmacist state the concern of his job becoming obsolete due to automation and AI in the near future.

[Metalcat]

What do you think a pharmacist does that could be done by machines?

Store, count, dispense prescribed drugs.  Check for drug-drug interactions and drug-disease state interactions using AI.  I think there will need to be a human involved for a while longer, but the question is which professions have peaked... I think Pharmacist is one if it hasn't already.  Again, not particularly knowledgeable about the profession, it popped into my head because I remember Jonathan from the ChooseFI podcast who was a pharmacist state the concern of his job becoming obsolete due to automation and AI in the near future.

Pharmacy peaked years ago and it has nothing to do with AI. Going back to my previous post, there are a lot of factors that are involved in a career "peaking", usually related to over supply and corporate creep into previously independent industries.

[bryan995]

This was funny: "Anything in the arts" - but it was gone a long time ago, probably never even got a chance to peak. Haha.

Hahah.

Anything in the non-technical (non scalable) arts was what I meant.

Any bloke doing basically anything can be wildly successful. Certain professions just tip the odds more so in your favor over others, which I think is the point here.

Ex: average SWE vs average makeup artist
300k vs 80k
Guaranteed work vs gig work
Near unlimited open roles vs limited roles
30hrs/week vs 60hrs/week
Work from home vs commute / travel
Etc etc

Do some makeup artists make 3M/yr? Probably. But if you plot the distributions of any given profession across a range of features, the winners will stand clearly out. Plot it over time and you can see when one has peaked vs one still being in a growth phase.

Apply monet-style to a picture of your dog.
https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/models/blob/master/research/nst_blogpost/4_Neural_Style_Transfer_with_Eager_Execution.ipynb

Oh good grief.

If we're going to compare careers against obscenely paid software engineers in specific parts of the world, then pretty much every career looks stupid.

Family physician? Dumb job, makes less than SWE in the Bay Area
Lawyer? Also dumb
Teacher? Sooooo dumb
HR director? Beyond dumb
University professor? Why bother?
Chef? What are you even thinking?

See what I mean?
To criticize a perfectly valid arts career just because a certain group of software professionals make a lot more is just silly. The vast majority of careers can't live up to that, it doesn't make them invalid or shitty careers.

I stand by my previous statement that now is actually an excellent time to be a creative professional.

Also, if you think makeup artists aren't making 3M a year, I think Jeffrey Star might have a thing or two (or over 200M) to say.

Not criticizing, just pointing out which professions have a higher likelihood of success, for the average worker. Lots of paths to success.  The best apples:apples here would be to compare a fresh grad across industries, and look at the AVERAGE salary/benefits/happiness.

Not everyone can be a 0.00000001% 200M Jeffrey star or a 0.0001% 700k Bay Area SWE. But on average, SWE/tech (anything STEM) seems to be one of the better professions now and likely into the future.

Do you think the average person with an aptitude for makeup artistry would have similar aptitude for software engineering (or anything STEM) if they'd just made a different choice in what to focus on? I'm pretty smart and reasonably tech-savvy and I couldn't be a SWE if you paid me a million dollars a day to do it.

Maybe? Hard to ever truly know.. It’s not like a human is born destined to be a chef or a makeup artist or a pilot. Lots of things contribute to a persons interests / intellect / aptitude. .I’m sure there were many parents that helped to focus a child’s attention / interests onto specific fields and professions, because they offered a likely path to success.  My hunch is that it worked more often than it did not.

I think if you spent some time as a SWE you’d realize that 1M comp for 2-3 hours a day of
‘output’ is quite a fair trade. It’s really not a hard job once you spend some time to learn the craft - just like everything else.

[bryan995]

Just saw this article about "Top 5 most valuable bachelor's degree fields vs bottom 5" and it echos some of what's been said in this thread:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/here-are-the-five-most-valuable-college-majors-.html

Well well well. Hah.

[former player]

What do you think a pharmacist does that could be done by machines?

Store, count, dispense prescribed drugs.  Check for drug-drug interactions and drug-disease state interactions using AI.  I think there will need to be a human involved for a while longer, but the question is which professions have peaked... I think Pharmacist is one if it hasn't already.  Again, not particularly knowledgeable about the profession, it popped into my head because I remember Jonathan from the ChooseFI podcast who was a pharmacist state the concern of his job becoming obsolete due to automation and AI in the near future.

Bib is mostly warehousing-type work and is already being automated with robots in big hospitals.

[former player]

Maybe it's not so bad to be busy from 9 to 5 and to be free the rest day. When you work home it's looks like you stay at work all day long. Maybe it can be interesting for somebody https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-cee/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/work-from-home-tips/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw5oiMBhDtARIsAJi0qk34_cTlZxfcStC-_JrYmNiCliHEgqUouHjxWCw88_o5po_QV0-Bv3IaAvvGEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

I think your idea of "free the rest of the day" will be met with hollow laughter from anyone bringing up children or caring for elderly or disabled relatives.

[coppertop]

All the discussion about tax accountants reminded me that clerical positions of all kinds are going away.  When I was still working, the accounting department of the law firm where I worked that originally had six or seven people had whittled down to two...the accountant in charge (moi) and a billing clerk.  Way back in the dark ages, everything had to be handwritten and then posted. Checks had to be handwritten and sent to the CFO for signature. Today's software does the work of many bookkeeping clerks in seconds.  File clerks are no longer needed because paper records have all but disappeared.  When I worked for a large trucking company in the late 90s/early 2000, there was a huge filing department where women painstakingly filed paperwork in folders and placed them in drawers.  I'm sure that department no longer exists.  Etc.

[StarBright]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

+1

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

I dropped out of singing in 2009 when two places I was contracted with folded. I had friends singing at top level houses who took pay cuts of more than 50% and their rates have never recovered. Gigs that used to pay 7-10k now pay 2k.

But I'm not sure passion professions ever peak - because someone is always passionate about them. But I'd guess musician compensation peaked in the early aughts.

And yep - the Arts flourished when the US had strong arts funding - which is totally tied to cold war funding in the 50-80s.

[GodlessCommie]

A pastor. No first hand experience - but hearing a lot that many smaller churches were struggling even before the pandemic, and even more so now. Those not willing to preach prosperity gospel are getting out. Megachurches are reportedly fine, but with the economy of the scale, they don't provide jobs for as many preachers.

[wageslave23]

On the topic of accounting - is the decline mostly happening for tax accountants at firms/by themselves who focus on individual returns or returns for very small businesses?  I ask because our family farm is a medium-sized business and we deeply depend on our extremely knowledgeable accountant and the firm she works for.  There are a lot of moving parts on the return, and they raise their rates every year, as they should.  I have no idea what kind of hours they have to work at that firm during tax season, but it can't be more than 60 a week based on conversations we've had.  Working in ag, our harvest usually goes 55-60 hours a week, so I know that can be draining, but it's for a set period of time each year.

Think about the most mind numbing/stressful paperwork you have had to do in your life (reading warranty information, product assembly instructions from IKEA, DMV paperwork) and doing that for 60 hours a week.  One week of that would be enough to make a lot of people put a gun to their head.

[Monocle Money Mouth]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

That's why I got out of classical music. Too many people want to do it and there aren't enough orchestras to support the musicians.

Even the auditions for the "keep your day job orchestras" are insanely competitive. The few auditions I attended, I heard people playing warmups that were more difficult than the solos I had  prepared. I'm pretty sure most of them never got a full time job performing either even though they were significantly more talented.

I think everyone should learn to play an instrument, sing, and read music. It's great for improving cognitive performance. I wouldn't recommend trying to do it for a living.

[HPstache]

A pastor. No first hand experience - but hearing a lot that many smaller churches were struggling even before the pandemic, and even more so now. Those not willing to preach prosperity gospel are getting out. Megachurches are reportedly fine, but with the economy of the scale, they don't provide jobs for as many preachers.

On the other hand, there is a ton of burn out causing a lot of pastors to leave the profession, so lots of vacancies that churches have a difficult time filling.

[Ape86]

Just saw this article about "Top 5 most valuable bachelor's degree fields vs bottom 5" and it echos some of what's been said in this thread:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/04/here-are-the-five-most-valuable-college-majors-.html

Sounds like "a great time to be in The Arts."

Bottom 5

155. Clinical Psychology

Median annual income: $49,000; unemployment rate: 3.8%

156. Composition and Speech

Median annual income:$42,000; unemployment rate: 4.9%

157. Drama and Theater Arts

Median annual income: $41,000; unemployment rate: 4.5%

158. Miscellaneous Fine Arts

Median annual income: $38,000; unemployment rate: 5.6%

159. Visual and Performing Arts

Median annual income: $35,500; unemployment rate: 3.6%

[GodlessCommie]

On the other hand, there is a ton of burn out causing a lot of pastors to leave the profession, so lots of vacancies that churches have a difficult time filling.

Isn't it the story of the moment, regardless of profession? Burnout, people leaving, trouble hiring. One has to wonder, though, where everyone went.

[Cool Friend]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

+1

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

They care very much about consuming it--it's compensating the people who did the work to create it they take exception to.

[GodlessCommie]

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

I feel like arts, along with journalism, fell into the internet trap: people want it, but expect it to be free.

[Metalcat]

A pastor. No first hand experience - but hearing a lot that many smaller churches were struggling even before the pandemic, and even more so now. Those not willing to preach prosperity gospel are getting out. Megachurches are reportedly fine, but with the economy of the scale, they don't provide jobs for as many preachers.

On the other hand, there is a ton of burn out causing a lot of pastors to leave the profession, so lots of vacancies that churches have a difficult time filling.

Yeah, because they can't afford to pay a living wage, they generally no longer provide housing, and the education requirements are still very intense.

I was talking to a newly minted minister a few months ago, and between his formal schooling and his, uh I'll call it internship, it took 5 years of navigating a byzantine bureaucracy, and having virtually no church support along the way to find churches willing to have him for his training.

He ended up having to move 7 hours away from his family for 2 solid years to do supervised bitch work for an asshole minister who made his life hell, and the church's response was basically "suck it up, no one said serving God was easy".

Now he gets to make 35K/yr constantly putting out bickering fights of church members about absolutely nothing to do with Christianity itself, and dealing with politics and infighting in the Church organization.

So yeah, I totally see why they have a crippling shortage of ministers.

[bill1827]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

+1

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

They care very much about consuming it--it's compensating the people who did the work to create it they take exception to.

I don't see that. Classical music is a minority interest and most concerts with established orchestras or performers are well patronised even at the high seat prices that are charged these days, so many people are happy to support the starving players.

[HPstache]

A pastor. No first hand experience - but hearing a lot that many smaller churches were struggling even before the pandemic, and even more so now. Those not willing to preach prosperity gospel are getting out. Megachurches are reportedly fine, but with the economy of the scale, they don't provide jobs for as many preachers.

On the other hand, there is a ton of burn out causing a lot of pastors to leave the profession, so lots of vacancies that churches have a difficult time filling.

Yeah, because they can't afford to pay a living wage, they generally no longer provide housing, and the education requirements are still very intense.

I was talking to a newly minted minister a few months ago, and between his formal schooling and his, uh I'll call it internship, it took 5 years of navigating a byzantine bureaucracy, and having virtually no church support along the way to find churches willing to have him for his training.

He ended up having to move 7 hours away from his family for 2 solid years to do supervised bitch work for an asshole minister who made his life hell, and the church's response was basically "suck it up, no one said serving God was easy".

Now he gets to make 35K/yr constantly putting out bickering fights of church members about absolutely nothing to do with Christianity itself, and dealing with politics and infighting in the Church organization.

So yeah, I totally see why they have a crippling shortage of ministers.

Wow, that's a completely different experience I have as one with insider knowledge .  Housing may not be provided like the old days (parsonages), instead pastors often opt to own their own homes with the church providing a special allowance for this.  Around here pastors get paid quite well, and at our church we have software that helps provide a picture of what a pastor/church employee typically gets paid due to experience, education level, cost of living area, etc... it's reasonable pay for a college educated person in my opinion.  No disagreements on the arguments within the church about stupid politic-y stuff though, Covid rules/behavior infighting is the hot topic now adays.

[DadJokes]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

+1

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

They care very much about consuming it--it's compensating the people who did the work to create it they take exception to.

I pay for classical music to exactly the extent I appreciate it: none at all. If orchestras were selling out theaters across the world, then the artists would get paid more. As things are, there is only a limited appreciation for it, so there are a very limited number of concert orchestras.

[Metalcat]

A pastor. No first hand experience - but hearing a lot that many smaller churches were struggling even before the pandemic, and even more so now. Those not willing to preach prosperity gospel are getting out. Megachurches are reportedly fine, but with the economy of the scale, they don't provide jobs for as many preachers.

On the other hand, there is a ton of burn out causing a lot of pastors to leave the profession, so lots of vacancies that churches have a difficult time filling.

Yeah, because they can't afford to pay a living wage, they generally no longer provide housing, and the education requirements are still very intense.

I was talking to a newly minted minister a few months ago, and between his formal schooling and his, uh I'll call it internship, it took 5 years of navigating a byzantine bureaucracy, and having virtually no church support along the way to find churches willing to have him for his training.

He ended up having to move 7 hours away from his family for 2 solid years to do supervised bitch work for an asshole minister who made his life hell, and the church's response was basically "suck it up, no one said serving God was easy".

Now he gets to make 35K/yr constantly putting out bickering fights of church members about absolutely nothing to do with Christianity itself, and dealing with politics and infighting in the Church organization.

So yeah, I totally see why they have a crippling shortage of ministers.

Wow, that's a completely different experience I have as one with insider knowledge .  Housing may not be provided like the old days (parsonages), instead pastors often opt to own their own homes with the church providing a special allowance for this.  Around here pastors get paid quite well, and at our church we have software that helps provide a picture of what a pastor/church employee typically gets paid due to experience, education level, cost of living area, etc... it's reasonable pay for a college educated person in my opinion.  No disagreements on the arguments within the church about stupid politic-y stuff though, Covid rules/behavior infighting is the hot topic now adays.

I'm sure it depends on the church and the community. But I also have a lot of insider insight as I'm very good friends with 3 different very senior members of 3 of the largest non catholic, non evangelical churches in Canada. It's not a good scene, and the petty infighting within these very old school organizations are holding them back from keeping up with the times. The Anglican church, which used to be one of the biggest in Canada, is on track to totally disappear within 20 years. It's not a pretty scene.

I've also made friends with a group of Presbyterian ministers in the eastern US who have all abandoned ministry to start an online faith community because they couldn't tolerate the work conditions and nonsense.

Again, I'm sure each church and region is different, but many churches are totally failing to adapt and to attract new ministers.

[chemistk]

To get a more detailed look at one segment of “the arts,” being an orchestral musician used to be a much easier career to enter. At the tippy top of the field (maybe about 10 orchestras in the US/Canada) the compensation is still ridiculously good, but good luck winning an audition for a position in any of those orchestras. There’s a much larger middle tier where you can have a salary and benefits and make a comfortable living (about 40-45 more orchestras). Beyond that many orchestras that used to be salaried have gone under or gone to just hiring musicians on a contract per-service basis. The top tier of contract musicians (mostly in LA and New York, plus maybe the first-call subs in most other major metro areas) can still make a pretty comfortable living.

The big reality is that the number of people aspiring to these positions is going up and the number of positions is going down. It used to be that the people in the New York Philharmonic were just pretty talented musicians doing very well for themselves. And the people in say, the Columbus Symphony, were quite unremarkable musicians, and also living very comfortably. Now the people in the New York Philharmonic are intensely well-trained artists, some of the best in the world at their respective instruments. And the members of the Columbus Symphony are not that far behind them in ability, while paid significantly less.

Every audition for a full-time position will have 50-120 people there for one position (plus dozens more applicants who were declined the opportunity to even play). And maybe there are a dozen auditions for full-time positions for any given instrument in a year. So your life at the beginning of your career comes down to stretching your meager freelance earnings as far as possible to pay out the wazoo out of your own pocket to travel to all these auditions, where maybe if you’re really one of the best players in the country you’ll have a 5% chance of winning. And maybe you’re good enough to play in one of the top orchestras and make 200k, but it wasn’t your lucky day when you were at that audition, and so you end up in a mid-tier orchestra that only pays 50k, and you still count yourself lucky to have full-time employment at all, while you wait for another 70-year-old who can barely play anymore to retire from their incredibly prestigious and lucrative position (which they won back in the 70s when the standards were far lower).

This is because ticket sales can’t at all fund the employment of a full orchestra, and the US doesn’t fund the arts for shit. So every orchestra in the US is funded primarily through philanthropy, and so the only orchestras that can afford to pay musicians really well are the ones that got set up with huge endowments back in the 50s when Leonard Bernstein and the New York Phil were on TV every week and Americans actually cared about classical music (hence, top-tier orchestras in decaying rust-belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh). Meanwhile in the rest of the developed world, orchestras are given generous government funding, but that’s another thing that the US government can’t pay for despite being the wealthiest nation in all of human history, because “socialism.”

Orchestras are thriving in Europe, east Asia, Australia, and New Zealand (though positions are still scarce and highly coveted), but if you’re a US-based musician, good luck stretching your tight budget to repeatedly travel across the world for auditions, and don’t even bother if you play an instrument where there’s too big of a stylistic gap between American playing and European playing.

+1

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

They care very much about consuming it--it's compensating the people who did the work to create it they take exception to.

I pay for classical music to exactly the extent I appreciate it: none at all. If orchestras were selling out theaters across the world, then the artists would get paid more. As things are, there is only a limited appreciation for it, so there are a very limited number of concert orchestras.

This is certainly a very particular, weird, and unfortunate failure of capitalism. Art, in all its forms, should always have a place in broader society. And specifically to the classical music perspective - think of the scores of some of the very best movies over the past few decades. With a strong ensemble and strong music, the score to the movie can often make or break it.

But getting to that point isn't the same as the steps one could take to learn graphic design or any other of the pieces that would go into making a great movie. Music really only "works" when there's a large crop of well-skilled musicians who have studied and perfected their art. And to do so requires a lot of capital, both time and money. And while we can compensate the folks who provide their skills for big budget productions, that same compensation isn't awarded to everyone else who is working to build others up and incubate the careers of the greats.

[JGS1980]

Accountants, specifically tax accountants.  And there is a major shortage of young CPAs because of that.

I’ve been mulling this over. Why has the need for tax accountant peaked? And if that’s the case, why is there a shortage?

Doesn't appear to me that the need has peaked.  It would, if politicians had the guts to simplify the tax code enough so that the average person could do their own tax return but that doesn't seem to be a risk anytime soon.  The bigger issue with accountants is that fewer and fewer graduates want to sign up for 60+ hour weeks during part of the year.  For many Accounting Firms, that goes well beyond just tax season.  Then, afterwards, if your Firm does audits, you get to spend several nights a year away from home on audits.

There's two sides of it.  The supply side is that being an accountant sucks and nobody wants to do it.  And most CPAs are in their 60s and retiring.  The demand side is that tax software is starting to compete with actual tax preparers, it doesn't do it right but laymens don't know that so they won't pay more for a CPA than for the software, so its keeping prices from inflating in order to retain experienced CPAs and/or draw in new talent.  So you have a perfect storm of burnt out old CPAs looking to retire, pissed off middle aged CPAs (like myself) looking to switch careers or FIRE, and college students who wouldn't touch taxes with a 10 ft pole, and employers who are desparately trying to find qualified, experienced CPAs for a salary that still allows them to make a profit but is probably 20% less than what it needs to be to attract the dwindling candidates.  What you end up with is a lot of EAs without proper education, working for minimum wage when you figure in all the extra hours, and they make a lot of mistakes because they don't understand the laws behind the tax code.  So yeah the whole career is going down the drain.

ETA: software isn't even the real competitor yet, but someone looking for a 20+ yr career? You better plan on being closer to an IT professional.  The real competitor to experienced, knowledgeable qualified CPA's is the person working out of their basement churning out tax returns as fast as they can enter the data.  They charge half what a professional in another industry would charge and produce terrible work that isn't peer reviewed.  The client doesn't know this and sees the tax return as a compliance based commodity to be shopped around.  The experienced CPA can either cut corners in order to compete or work for a lot less per hr then they are worth.

My CPA is worth her weight in gold.  I'd pay her triple for completing my taxes if she asked.  I think I'm knowledgeable about this stuff, but she always knows more because she's been doing it 25+ years.  I think there will always be value for high end performers in every profession. It's the marginal cases that need to worry.

[mm1970]

Do you think the average person with an aptitude for makeup artistry would have similar aptitude for software engineering (or anything STEM) if they'd just made a different choice in what to focus on? I'm pretty smart and reasonably tech-savvy and I couldn't be a SWE if you paid me a million dollars a day to do it.

I'm gonna go with a hard no.

Shoot, I'm an engineer and I can't do software anything to save my life.

[StarBright]

I had a longish arts post but I deleted because I feel like most people don't really care about the arts :)

I feel like arts, along with journalism, fell into the internet trap: people want it, but expect it to be free.

I agree with that. And I think there is a pervasive idea that talent is luck and not hard work and therefor not worth remuneration.

But like, I was in conservatory and professional level training and residency programs for almost 8 years. I am as professional as anyone that can be hired in my region so if you want me to sing at your daughter's wedding so you can say "the singer trained at X" then darn it, you get to pay for that privilege.

But I think we confuse the Arts with a public good in the US (because it used to be). So you combine free internet entertainment, "talent", and a history of something being subsidized for the public good and you have a perfect storm of reasons to not feel like you should pay for something.

But it carries over to even popular art. I am lucky enough to still work in an arts tangential business that deals with some super high end popular entertainment, and the people in the trenches, even programmers, make crap money if you look at it hourly. Grumble Grumble Grumble Capitalism  . . .  :)

This is certainly a very particular, weird, and unfortunate failure of capitalism. Art, in all its forms, should always have a place in broader society. And specifically to the classical music perspective - think of the scores of some of the very best movies over the past few decades. With a strong ensemble and strong music, the score to the movie can often make or break it.

But getting to that point isn't the same as the steps one could take to learn graphic design or any other of the pieces that would go into making a great movie. Music really only "works" when there's a large crop of well-skilled musicians who have studied and perfected their art. And to do so requires a lot of capital, both time and money. And while we can compensate the folks who provide their skills for big budget productions, that same compensation isn't awarded to everyone else who is working to build others up and incubate the careers of the greats.

Love all of this ^ !

[Telecaster]

I feel like arts, along with journalism, fell into the internet trap: people want it, but expect it to be free.

The arts have never been that great.  There have always been a few breakout rock stars, but traditionally, most artists relied on patronage from wealthy people. 

[GodlessCommie]

The arts have never been that great.  There have always been a few breakout rock stars, but traditionally, most artists relied on patronage from wealthy people.

A joke I heard: it is very easy to figure out if a painter was a genius or not. You only need to see if they died in poverty.