Does “picking” make the world a worse place?
According to a worker survey by compensation database PayScale, people who work as “pickers,” or those who run around factories plucking the items from your online order for delivery, think so. With median pay around $24,800, 21 percent of pickers told PayScale that they thought their job “makes the world a worse place.”
Picking only comes behind fast food workers when it comes to those who think their job is pretty worthless to humanity.
The people who think their jobs have the most meaning? They work in faith-based services, education or medical-related fields. Overall, PayScale found that the career paths people found most useful included the military, community and social workers, and education and library workers (see chart).
Pay is not necessarily a great indicator of how much workers think their gig is contributing to society. “There are relatively few jobs with both very high pay and very high job meaning,” PayScale reports. “And most of these are in the medical field.”
“Computer and mathematical workers have the highest median salaries ($72,900) but only 44 percent think their jobs are meaningful,” the survey found.
Note that the survey ranks three areas: Jobs that are the most meaningful, least meaningful and those that workers see as making the world a worse place (aka fast food, picking). The least meaningful gigs were parking lot attendants, gaming supervisors (like in a casino), and pre-press technicians who work in print operations.
To assemble the data, PayScale surveyed more than 2.7 million workers between June 11, 2013, and June 11, 2015. The results cover 24 job categories and more than 500 job titles.
