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Interestingly, this graph visualises the jobs of people in the wealthiest households. It does not mean that those jobs actually bring in the wealth. I was surp

Interestingly, this graph visualises the jobs of people in the wealthiest households. It does not mean that those jobs actually bring in the wealth. I was surprised to see the relatively large box of elementary school teachers. Surely those jobs don't pay that well. It might be one of those cases where correlation is mistaken for causation: perhaps a lot of people who dream to be a teacher are able to realise it because they have a wealthy banker for a spouse or something.

patio11 15y ago
Two married schoolteachers in a wealthy suburban school district near their peak earning years will gross nearly $200k for the household. (I'm related to multiple examples.) The BLS collects copious stats on how much different occupations are paid. Reports of them being working poor are highly exaggerated.
- johncch 15y ago
  My anecdotal evidence points to otherwise. On the other hand though, I believe 200k is close, but insufficient to place one into the 1%.
  - mikek 15y ago
    The the top 1% is $383K and up.
    - deleted 15y ago
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- drumdance 15y ago
  I've never heard teachers described as "working poor." Just middle income.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Two working people earning $200k together isn't what I would describe as particularly wealthy. That would put them squarely in what most people consider slightly upper-middle class. Consider that two engineers right out of college should be able to make that much.
  - moocow01 15y ago
    Really depends on cost of living. I looked at a breakdown of this recently by locale. In the bay area or NY it doesn't get you anywhere close but in most other areas it puts you in or pretty close to the 1%.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Well, he said wealthy suburban.
  - ZachPruckowski 15y ago
    >"Two working people earning $200k together isn't what I would describe as particularly wealthy" You probably should, since the median household income is something like $50k or so, a quarter of what they make.
    - cma 15y ago
      In what proportion are those: A. two person households, and B. two fulltime worker households?
- jshen 15y ago
  My wife is a teacher, and I know a lot of other teachers in southern california. I don't know any that make anything close to $100k/year. Here's the LA Unified pay scale. http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/ttable.pdf http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/tta...
  - bzbarsky 15y ago
    "wealthy suburban school district" is important. For example, http://acta.us/growls/2010/01/keeping_up_with_the_jones_in_m.html http://acta.us/growls/2010/01/keeping_up_with_the_jones_in_m... lists numbers slightly over $100k for maximum salaries for teachers in two Maryland counties. http://va.aft.org/fcft/index.cfm?action=downloadasset&assetid=5df94d05-112c-487e-803b-d3e98d73d598 http://va.aft.org/fcft/index.cfm?action=downloadasset&as... is Fairfax County in Virginia; salaries are near $90k during peak earning years. But even the pay scale you linked to has salaries near $90k at the top of the range....
    - jshen 15y ago
      In all of these pay scales it is only the absolute top of the scale that reaches 100k, and LA never reaches it. Very few teachers reach this. By contrast programmers reach 100k rather quickly, yet they aren't as large in the original link. Let's remember what patio11 was replying to," I was surprised to see the relatively large box of elementary school teachers. Surely those jobs don't pay that well."
      - bzbarsky 15y ago
        In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k, not over 200k. As far as the original comment about teachers, that's just basic statistics. There are lots of teachers. If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart, which would be a big box. In practice, only 0.9% of teachers show up, but the real takeaway is that teachers are relatively well-educated and so not unlikely to actually be marrying people who end up with high salaries. There are plenty of occupations on that chart in which a lot less than 1% of the people in the occupation end up in the top 1% of households. So as far as comparing box sizes, you have to balance better pay for programmers against the fact that there are a lot fewer of them than there are teachers...
- anamax 15y ago
  $100k/year for teachers is somewhat rare. However, $50k/year pensions for teachers is not all that rare and lots of retired police and fire folk do as well or better. How much "net worth" does it take to throw off $50k/year guaranteed by taxpayers?
  - anamax 15y ago
    Thanks to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469401 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469401 , we know that a $50k/year pension is worth >$1.5M NPV. So, those folks are near 1%ers. They just don't own the assets that will generate the money that they'll be spending. We do, or rather, we own the liability.
- rhino42 15y ago
  You'd have to be pretty killer to pull that off, however. I know for a fact that out of college Microsoft picks up engineers from MIT for 84k, and NASA gets new greats (not necessarily from MIT) for 76k. (disclaimer- I am not from MIT, but these ate both very reliable sources)
gcp 15y ago
It's due to the sheer number: over 10M teachers. So there's simply a lot of them (in absolute numbers) that ended up marrying a 1%-er, even if its percentage-wise not out of the ordinary. You can see that the color is very pale, and only slightly darker for college and universities.
PaulMest 15y ago
I was also intrigued when I first saw the large amount of elementary school teachers in the 1%. Then I saw extra information called out on the sidebar: "School teachers don't earn enough to make the top 1 percent on their own, but many live in 1-percent households, primarily through marriage."
- micheljansen 15y ago
  Ah, I did not even see that! At least they are aware that this visualisation has shortcomings :)
niels_olson 15y ago
I have a friend who married into this exact circumstance who turned down med school at Duke to teach at Stuyvesant.
gbog 15y ago
I don't like the way you put it. The spouse of a teacher might make more money, ok, but he or she is not a "banker".
- micheljansen 15y ago
  I was invoking stereotypes, but perhaps those were a bit unfair. After all, according to the data linked, only 13.3% of "financial services sales occupations" and 10.7% of "financial specialists" in investment companies belong to the 1%. I should have picked on physicians :P
  - micheljansen 15y ago
    Also, to defend myself, according to this article the top half of the 1% are in fact people in the banking and financial services industry: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manage...

patio11 15y ago

Two married schoolteachers in a wealthy suburban school district near their peak earning years will gross nearly $200k for the household. (I'm related to multiple examples.) The BLS collects copious stats on how much different occupations are paid. Reports of them being working poor are highly exaggerated.

johncch 15y ago
My anecdotal evidence points to otherwise. On the other hand though, I believe 200k is close, but insufficient to place one into the 1%.
- mikek 15y ago
  The the top 1% is $383K and up.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
drumdance 15y ago
I've never heard teachers described as "working poor." Just middle income.
burgerbrain 15y ago
Two working people earning $200k together isn't what I would describe as particularly wealthy. That would put them squarely in what most people consider slightly upper-middle class. Consider that two engineers right out of college should be able to make that much.
- moocow01 15y ago
  Really depends on cost of living. I looked at a breakdown of this recently by locale. In the bay area or NY it doesn't get you anywhere close but in most other areas it puts you in or pretty close to the 1%.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Well, he said wealthy suburban.
- ZachPruckowski 15y ago
  >"Two working people earning $200k together isn't what I would describe as particularly wealthy" You probably should, since the median household income is something like $50k or so, a quarter of what they make.
  - cma 15y ago
    In what proportion are those: A. two person households, and B. two fulltime worker households?
jshen 15y ago
My wife is a teacher, and I know a lot of other teachers in southern california. I don't know any that make anything close to $100k/year. Here's the LA Unified pay scale. http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/ttable.pdf http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/tta...
- bzbarsky 15y ago
  "wealthy suburban school district" is important. For example, http://acta.us/growls/2010/01/keeping_up_with_the_jones_in_m.html http://acta.us/growls/2010/01/keeping_up_with_the_jones_in_m... lists numbers slightly over $100k for maximum salaries for teachers in two Maryland counties. http://va.aft.org/fcft/index.cfm?action=downloadasset&assetid=5df94d05-112c-487e-803b-d3e98d73d598 http://va.aft.org/fcft/index.cfm?action=downloadasset&as... is Fairfax County in Virginia; salaries are near $90k during peak earning years. But even the pay scale you linked to has salaries near $90k at the top of the range....
  - jshen 15y ago
    In all of these pay scales it is only the absolute top of the scale that reaches 100k, and LA never reaches it. Very few teachers reach this. By contrast programmers reach 100k rather quickly, yet they aren't as large in the original link. Let's remember what patio11 was replying to," I was surprised to see the relatively large box of elementary school teachers. Surely those jobs don't pay that well."
    - bzbarsky 15y ago
      In fairness the comment about teachers in suburban districts was that two teacher salaries would be near 200k, not over 200k. As far as the original comment about teachers, that's just basic statistics. There are lots of teachers. If you assume that people who earn >$400k or so marry people from other occupations more or less uniformly, you'd expect close to 1% of teachers to show up on this chart, which would be a big box. In practice, only 0.9% of teachers show up, but the real takeaway is that teachers are relatively well-educated and so not unlikely to actually be marrying people who end up with high salaries. There are plenty of occupations on that chart in which a lot less than 1% of the people in the occupation end up in the top 1% of households. So as far as comparing box sizes, you have to balance better pay for programmers against the fact that there are a lot fewer of them than there are teachers...
anamax 15y ago
$100k/year for teachers is somewhat rare. However, $50k/year pensions for teachers is not all that rare and lots of retired police and fire folk do as well or better. How much "net worth" does it take to throw off $50k/year guaranteed by taxpayers?
- anamax 15y ago
  Thanks to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469401 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3469401 , we know that a $50k/year pension is worth >$1.5M NPV. So, those folks are near 1%ers. They just don't own the assets that will generate the money that they'll be spending. We do, or rather, we own the liability.
rhino42 15y ago
You'd have to be pretty killer to pull that off, however. I know for a fact that out of college Microsoft picks up engineers from MIT for 84k, and NASA gets new greats (not necessarily from MIT) for 76k. (disclaimer- I am not from MIT, but these ate both very reliable sources)

gcp 15y ago

It's due to the sheer number: over 10M teachers. So there's simply a lot of them (in absolute numbers) that ended up marrying a 1%-er, even if its percentage-wise not out of the ordinary. You can see that the color is very pale, and only slightly darker for college and universities.

PaulMest 15y ago

I was also intrigued when I first saw the large amount of elementary school teachers in the 1%. Then I saw extra information called out on the sidebar: "School teachers don't earn enough to make the top 1 percent on their own, but many live in 1-percent households, primarily through marriage."

micheljansen 15y ago
Ah, I did not even see that! At least they are aware that this visualisation has shortcomings :)

niels_olson 15y ago

I have a friend who married into this exact circumstance who turned down med school at Duke to teach at Stuyvesant.

gbog 15y ago

I don't like the way you put it. The spouse of a teacher might make more money, ok, but he or she is not a "banker".

micheljansen 15y ago
I was invoking stereotypes, but perhaps those were a bit unfair. After all, according to the data linked, only 13.3% of "financial services sales occupations" and 10.7% of "financial specialists" in investment companies belong to the 1%. I should have picked on physicians :P
- micheljansen 15y ago
  Also, to defend myself, according to this article the top half of the 1% are in fact people in the banking and financial services industry: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manage...