Five Most Overpaid Jobs In America
What do CEOs, professional sports athletes, and high ranking government officials have in common? They all expect incredible salaries. These positions are extremely scarce rather than simply overpaid.
If everyone could play basketball well enough to make the NBA, the salaries would quickly drop from being 100 times that of a public school teacher to a more reasonable amount.
But, not every high paying position is limited to the mega-talented. Some jobs let anyone earn a six figure income without having advanced education or outstanding ability.
Want to be happily overpaid? Here are five high-income occupations pretty much anyone can do:
- Wedding Photographers – Charging between $2,000 and $6,000 per wedding, wedding photographers are incredibly overpaid. Total work for each wedding is generally just a sit-down consultation combined with a single day spent following the happy couple. While equipment costs and film development must be covered, thanks to digital technology such costs have been heavily reduced. Unfortunately for the consumer, photographers do not offer any reduction in price for missed photos, amateur shots, or other mediocre work product.
- Motivational Speakers – While former political office holders such as Rudy Giuliani easily command 6 figures per speech, there are thousands of ‘gurus’ across the United States turning a significant profit on very little work. For-profit seminars often charge attendees up to $100 per hour to listen to speakers with little if any actual experience. Often, posting an ad in the newspaper combined with some local signage and flyers is enough to convince several dozen people to come to a ‘free seminar’. These meetings are then used to pressure the attendees into spending several thousand dollars to attend the seminars where the ‘real’ secrets to success will be shared.
- Timeshare Sales Associate – Anyone willing to work in these high pressure sales environments can earn more than $100,000 with 20 hour work weeks and no education. The downside is that most if not all of the money earned is tied to commissions. A sales associate earns between $1,000 and $5,000 per sale, with a steady stream of 1-3 potential clients committing to listen to your sales approach every day. Still, with average salaries in excess of $40,000, selling timeshares makes more money than being a teacher
- Real Estate Agent – Anyone willing to dedicate 200 hours to attending real estate school, and pony up roughly $1,000 in licensing fees can become a real estate agent. With commissions of 3% per sale, the small amount of work required in selling just two $300,000 homes will earn an agent more than a year working full time on a minimum wage job.
- Longshoremen – No education is required for the unionized job of handling shipping cargo. With wages in excess of $100,000 per year, this job pays far more than one could expect performing construction or any other manual labor.
Reader's Comments
Actually, as a wedding photographer, you’ll likely spend two days or more post processing the digital images. No digital image comes out of any camera as “ready to print”, they always need improvement. Knowing what to improve (sharpening, color balance, cropping) makes you a professional and I’d expect to be compensated for the time.
Have you ever worked with a bride on her wedding day? There’s hardly any amount of money that would bring me back into THAT environment of pushy, b!@%$y whiney women who want the impossible. Been there, done that.
Hardly.
I am not even a wedding photographer but work with them all the time. I can tell you that your assessment of what they do is absolutely wrong. They do more than hold consultation, shoot for a few hours, and upload their images to the internet or burn a disc. I pity you for being so delusional. Perhaps you should fact check before you make opinions.
On average, a photographer shoots a 2-4 hour engagement session of the couple. The images are all color corrected, digitally enhanced, photoshopped, what-have-you.
They also work up to 14 hours on wedding day with second shooters and assistants who also need to be paid.
Then they must color correct and digitally enhance thousands of images.
They’re packages at some of those prices also include prints, expensive albums (more than one!), etc.
And if you knew anything about business, you’d know you’d have to factor in the cost of doing it.
So to say that a photographer walks away with 5K in their pocket is a lie.
Stop posting misinformation.
All my best,
Candice Coppola
Great example of an article based on general assumption rather than any type of actual research. Did you interview any professional wedding photographers? Or just guessed at how much work goes into covering a high-stress fast-paced 10-hour event? Not to mention the editing of 3000 photos that are taken by multiple photographers that all need to be managed and compensated. Then comes album design, production, shipping costs, packaging, etc. Can’t forget the cost of the ridiculous amount of storeage that’s needed for all the digital files. We easily have over $30,000 worth of equipment that is continuously being upgraded to keep up with the technological advances by the camera manufacturers.
Yeah….totally overpaid.
I will agree that there are some people that may call themselves photographers that run out purchase a hobby digital camera then all the sudden they are professional photographers with research brides can find a TRUE PROFESSIONAL! I will tell you it is not as easy as you make it sound. It is NOT a consultation then shoot and be done! There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes, time spent with emails and preparing the bride for the day of, being by her side and providing emotional support to both bride and groom. Usually there is an engagement session as well as the day off, editing of images and adding artistic enhancements. Most photographers these days are true artist and have knowledge of how to use their cameras and lighting equipment. NOT ANYONE can do my job!!! You for writing should do a little research because what you are writing is SO INACCURATE! Visit myself and my photographer friends in CT to a little photo challenge I would love for you to prove ANYONE can be a photographer.
-Val McCormick
You are extremely misinformed if you think that’s all that wedding photographers do. Way to do your research and publish an accurate article.
I don’t think these guy knows anything about photography and real estate.
I know photographers that they put lots of time and energy on their projects.
As a real estate agent, it takes more than just attending school and getting your Lic. You should do some research before you write anything, why don’t you put your names to your article are you afraid? Probably because you are a moron…
This is not journalism it’s a just stupidity…
I’ve done photography. I know what goes into making a good photo and I know how much work is involved. These photographers that commented are completely deluded. So you deal with the bride… big deal. Editing photos is a snap these days if and you know what you’re doing it’s that much easier. For the amount of money a photographer gets paid, this amount of stress is nothing. No, not anyone can be a photographer. Some people just cannot see what makes for good composition. However, it is not that hard to become a photographer. Taking 1 or 2 community college classes on photography will go a very VERY long way.
This person is misinformed across the board. You try being a longshoreman for a DAY and see if you think their job isn’t worth any amount of money.
Personally, when the time comes I have considered selling my house FSBO but that’s because I have some marketing skills and know good attorney’s for the paperwork component.
All jobs have a value proposition. You can make personal judgments about their value and act accordingly.
I’m more sympathetic to your argument on photographers than a lot of those who commented but I think this article more generally is just random conjecture.
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