12th May 2012, 09:42 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:And there are some excavators earning 25k a year...not many I grant you but a few.
I guess my first question would to be what is your definition of a digger? Maybe we are not talking about the same thing. If we are then my next question is HOW? I would be very interested to learn how someone in the commercial sector makes 25k a year as a digger by working for others. I think lots of people would very interested in that. Do they work of EH HS Cadw? They tend to pay theirs around 19k starting.
kevin wooldridge Wrote:I don't think there is as much flexibility as you suggest when you say that archaeologists will ditch a lower paid employer and go and work for a higher paid one......surely not. Most people are much more rational than that and would take into account the length of contract on offer, closeness to home etc etc. Not that that matters to many archaeologists who are just looking for work - any work - rather than negotiating from a position of some security and looking to improve upon it....
I should probably quantify scale. My point was that pay will cluster around certain points because of limits that employers can pay or because they move jobs. Now looking at the distribution you can see that most jobs range within 10-20% of each other. What you don't see is the project manager being offered 60k or the excavator 30k. In that same token you don't see excavators being offered 10k or PM being offered 20k. Jobs that pay less than a third of the average. This is were i think the incentive kicks in for people to change jobs, a boost of 150% on pay to do the same job. Of course you don't see such difference in pay because well people move. Though when you get down to 10% 5% difference, yeah petrol money alone could eat that up so pay stays about the same.
I think we are on the same page as far as not all job choices are determined by money, completely agree with you. I think we don't see it happen much because people do move when its bad forcing the employer to adjust and some employers actually care about their employees and offer them the best wage they can and still be competitive. The top and bottom pays are constrained but I do generally think many employers try to pay what they can.
My whole point is that job postings are a pretty accurate reflection of GENERAL pay conditions because 1. they can only go so high due to market constraints 2. they can only go so low before someone says $#*( that. 3. many employers are not out there to screw people and generally will give what they can which is dictated by the market
kevin wooldridge Wrote:I think where all archaeological employment surveys suffer from distortion is taking into account the length of contract.
It is just how you look at it. In the states no one posts jobs as 16k, 25k, 45k, a year for lower level jobs its all $ per hr. You assume you are making money per hour and not over a year. Everyone looks at it as oh 1 week of work that is 40hrs x pay = how much I will make next week. It is also a bit of perspective. Though this is the UK and you bring up a good point and I will bring it up at the next profiling the profession meeting.