It was the question that the Offspring posed to their fans in the nineties, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Choosing a career path when you’re fresh out of high school is extremely hard.
That’s the choice you must make though, when you apply to university, TAFE, or for a traineeship or apprenticeship.
According to Kate Southam, editor of careerone.com.au, MySpace Jobs, and Ask Kate, the carrot dangling in front of Generation Y, influencing their career choice is predominantly the size of their prospective pay packet.
‘The most common thing that really influences people when they are first starting out is money and prestige…and access to responsibility,’ Ms Southam said.
‘They never, never, never ask about career paths.’
So what are the top paying jobs?
The latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed a few interesting nuggets of information about wages in Australia.
The average person in Australia works 38.1 hours a week and earns around $1,045.
On average professionals are the highest earners on $1,294 a week and people in sales are the worst paid earning $805 per week.
Predictably, doctors, university lecturers and engineers are among the highest paid workers, with doctors earning on average $53 per hour.
However, doctors don’t rate as the hardest workers, with truck drivers working the longest hours and the most overtime.
According to the ABS, childcare workers, educational aides and hairdressers are the worst paid, earning around $670 a week. Which, compared to the average doctors wage of $2,482 a week, is quite scanty indeed.
The Commissioner for Equal Opportunity, Linda Matthews said there were complex issues around the division of paid and unpaid work in society.
‘Most of the sectors that women work in – health, community services, retail – are known to offer minimum conditions, part time work and low earnings,’ Ms Matthews said.
However, Ms Southam added that while controversial, there is a stigma associated with certain industries.
‘Female dominated industries tend to be paid less…Even an industry that use to be male dominated, once it becomes female dominated the pay goes down.’
In the last few years, young school leavers have been under the impression that trades are where the money is. However, labourers are among the worst paid on an average of $868 per week.
While labourers might be at the lower end of the wage scale, specialists in trade and people who own their own businesses rated well.
Ms Southam said that there were people in trades making excessive amounts of money and being head hunted overseas, while jobs that traditionally were seen as high income earners, were not as profitable as once imagined.
‘There are so many architects trying to do something else because they are incredibly underpaid,’ she said.
According to Ms Southam, the key to a profitable financial career was not to aim for the highest paying job, but instead to go for a sustainable career path with opportunities to grow.
The wage scale – where do you fit in?
http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/1D492667CDF1BE94CA25728F0016A0F9/$File/6306001a.xls