Somebody's Gotta Do It
"You couldn't pay me enough to do that." But not everybody feels that way. Nor can people agree on what would make a career path so distasteful as to remove it from consideration. For instance, the fact that the median salary for a veterinarian is $73,000+ in itself tends to mitigate the poop-and-pus factor. PayScale has assembled a list of jobs, the dollar signs of which might offset their intimate connection witih ick.
The repugnant features of certain jobs are apt to assure that there will be plenty of openings. Portable toilet cleaner and garbage collector positions tend to be easy to get. Ditto sewer workers; in some cities, they come across the occasional corpse.
The Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs show explores this--in amazing detail. Those who are not faint of heart nor weak of stomach will find their web site, um..., fascinating, shall we say? (Personally, I abandoned ship when I got to Poo Pot Maker.)
Which leads us to the important social-policy question (and the justification for the paragraphs above): are there really jobs in America that only immigrants will do? Government-generated statistics used by the Center for Immigration Studies don't indicate that. Even before the recession only four civilian occupations (out of 465) were majority immigrant. Even in those four occupations (which account for less than one percent of the workforce), the native-born workforce stood at 47%. In media-stereotyped jobs: maids/housekeeper - 55% native-born; taxi driver, chauffers, etc. - 58% native-born; construction laborers - 65% native-born.
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