Showtime
08-17-2002, 09:23 AM
Long article about different non traditional jobs that break the 100k mark:
Breaking the $100K Barrier
Patricia Kitchen
Newsday - August 11, 2002
At one time in his career, Fred Geling would have been known as a grease monkey.
Now he heads a team of highly skilled auto technicians at Habberstad BMW in Huntington Station. And two years ago, his salary did what he never dreamed of when he was a 14-year-old tinkering with a 1949 Studebaker. It crossed the $100,000-a-year mark.
"It makes you feel like you're up there with everybody else," said Geling, 56, of St. James.
More than a few people in unlikely lines of work have crossed the six-figure threshold that once seemed reserved for business executives and highly educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and investment bankers. While still far from the norm, such salaries are becoming more common for select teachers, cops, nurses and various blue-collar types.
What are the forces driving such salaries? Experts say factors include more complex jobs that call for more skills; a paucity of workers in certain key industries; and overtime, which especially goes up during lean economic times such as these when businesses demand more of their workers rather than expand their staffs.
Men outnumber women among six-figure earners. Data just released from the U.S. Census Bureau show 315,200 men in New York State topping $100,000 in earnings compared with 83,400 women. That's 5.5 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, of all those who worked full-time and year-round in 1999.
Those figures include the likely suspects such as doctors and lawyers but also workers in Geling's position whose jobs have become increasingly complex.
"We have to wipe out the old picture," said Gary Huth, labor analyst for the New York State Labor Department. "Some jobs have become high-skilled but are still caught in the image of low-skill, low-wage." As Geling knows too well, "It's not your grandfather's auto shop anymore," Huth said.
Novices who hope to enter the automotive field and leave schooling behind have another think coming, Geling said. Each year the technology is becoming more sophisticated and complex, not just for BMWs but for all makes.
Look at what he sees as the leader of the pack - the BMW 745 model that came out this year. It has a computer screen on the dashboard that controls the radio, telephone, heating, air conditioning and navigational systems. Technicians get two weeks of schooling to learn how to service this model alone. And they don't speak of simply repairing anymore. It's "diagnosing," said Geling, the service manager. "This is a thinking person's world," not unlike that of a physician with a specialty. Gone are the days when a monkey wrench was the primary tool.
He knows of plenty of six-figure technicians at other dealerships, though he has none working for him at the moment, as his staff is young. He said he would be glad to bring onboard a seasoned, factory-trained technician at that level.
For the most part, techs' earnings are based on each job they do. If a job is expected to take four hours, but the tech does it in two, he or she still gets paid for the four hours. So their earnings are based on speed and expertise.
Still, Geling sees high-paying jobs go begging. A help-wanted ad he placed recently garnered only about a dozen calls. Why? For one thing, car dealers are paying their technicians well to stay put. And many young people who might once have gone into automotive work have opted for computer training instead.
When he was coming of age, he was lured by "the love of the automobile." Today's cars, for the most part, are seen just as modes of transportation.
Here are some other types of jobs that can pay $100,000 or more that aren't traditionally thought of as high-paying:
Police officers. Almost 1,300 Nassau County officers, 46.2 percent of the force, topped $100,000 in taxable income last year, and in Suffolk County more than 1,600 out of about 2,500 officers, detectives and supervisors made six figures. In Northport Village, the average salary of patrol officers is $104,200 before overtime, said Mayor Peter Panarites.
"I like to see everyone make a fair and living wage, but I think with the police union and binding arbitration, things have gotten way out of hand," Panarites said.
Last year, five civilian tradesmen doing non-Sept. 11 related work for the New York City Police Department earned more than $100,000 each in overtime alone.
Insulators and asbestos workers, who earn a top range of $80,000 a year, can hit six figures by working weekends or holidays at double time, though it's certainly not the norm. "It may not be the healthiest job in the world, but the money's clean," said Dennis Ippolito, business manager of Local 12, Heat and Frost Insulator and Asbestos Workers.
Experienced dental technologists, those behind-the-scenes laboratory workers who create ceramic crowns and other dental appliances, can bring in six figures, said Nicholas Manos, a professor at New York City College of Technology, which offers associate's degrees in the field. While he sees 100-percent job placement each year among dental technologists, he said "the average person doesn't even know we exist."
Administrative assistants, for the most part pulling in $50,000 to $70,000 in the New York area, can hit the jackpot when they support the topmost executives in major companies. As Huth pointed out, these jobs, too, have morphed into something much more complex, involving spreadsheet analysis, sales data preparation and event planning, and often leading to titles that have little to do with the old title "secretary."
But less than 1 percent of the 40,000 members of the International Association of Administrative Professionals earn at least $100,000, said its communications manager Rick Stroud. "Three cheers for them," he said. "We wish it happened more."
Such salaries come as no surprise to Walter Gowens, a certified financial planner with Prudential Vanguard Financial Services in Manhattan. In the past three to five years, he has seen blue-collar clients in the six-figure category rise from about 5 percent to 15 percent of his business, among them a number of telephone and fax line installers, as well as aircraft maintenance workers.
On the other hand, one person who was surprised to find everyday people in this salary range is Barbara Stanny, author of "Secrets of Six-Figure Women" (HarperCollins, $23.95). When her agent first suggested she tackle the topic, Stanny, a motivational speaker and former journalist, expected to discover that "to make big money you had to have a Harvard MBA and wear designer suits ... be out-of-my-league kind of women."
She found that was not the case. Though many of her interviews were with lawyers, doctors, consultants and investment bankers, she also spoke with writers, teachers, musicians - even a matchmaker and a psychic.
"For every woman who had a PhD or MBA, there were more that had an associate's degree or no college at all and that didn't stop them," Stanny said.
She found that all her interviewees had one thing in common: At some point, each made what she calls a "declaration of intention" that found them saying, "It's time to make some money. ... They developed a profit motive. When they had no profit motive, they gave their time away."
While making $100,000 is a dream come true for some, it does come with caveats. A big one is the fact that "$100,000 isn't really big money," especially in the New York metropolitan area with its high cost of living, said Charles Peck, a compensation expert with the Conference Board, a business research organization in Manhattan.
And there are potential downsides for those whose big salaries depend on overtime: Working long hours can deprive workers of family and community time, as well as the chance to get further skills training, said Brian M. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, a consortium of 375 unions.
He said he hears of some big earners among building trades workers, theatrical and stage employees, machinists and aerospace workers, though six figures is "not indicative of the average earnings."
Employers may "use overtime as an attractive selling tool," he said, "but it [sometimes] obscures the inadequacy of base pay. ... Working people shouldn't be paying their rent or mortgages based on overtime."
Verlia M. Brown, a surgical intensive care nurse, concurs. Even though she has been hovering at the $100,000 mark for the past three years, she does it by supplementing her 37.5-hour-a-week head nurse's job at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn with an average of two 12-hour shifts a week at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
Experienced and well-educated nurses should be able to make $100,000 with no added shifts, she said, in view of the stress level they're under as well as the importance of their work. That's why she also serves on the city nurses' contract negotiating committee for the New York State Nurses Association. The money is good, she said, "but could be a lot better."
Yet she didn't envision earning such a healthy paycheck back in 1974 when she got started in her profession at a salary of $9,500 a year.
"I'm not rich. I just work hard," said Brown, who describes the rewards of that labor: the ability to put down a 25 percent deposit on her home in Wantagh, shopping at Fortunoff's, visiting her native Jamaica, along with other spots around the world. "I want to live in a nice neighborhood," she said, and "I like nice things."
She bemoans the fact that some people place a higher value on the work of athletes such as Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan - entertainers, she said. "To me that's frivolous. Nurses save lives, but people still think all they do is push bedpans and give out pain medication."
Teaching also has been traditionally associated with ho-hum wages, but some veteran teachers on Long Island - those with 60 to 90 credits past a master's degree and 20 to 35 years' experience - can reach the six-figure mark.
The public's impression, said Lynn Costello, retired president of the East Islip Teachers Association, is, "'Maybe it's a hard job, maybe it's an important job, but we can get people cheaper. ... A lot will do it for the love of the job and they don't want that much money.' Which, by the way, means women," said Costello, who started his career 38 years ago, when it was legal to pay women less than men.
The teachers who get there, he said, arrive at the six-figure level much later in their careers than those in other professions. Having just crossed the threshold himself two years ago, this former government and history teacher points to more than 50 teachers in his district who achieved the same salary, with 37 of them just retiring, too.
"There's this idea," Costello said, "that you shouldn't be in a job to make money. It should be closer to a religious experience. ... The public liked us a lot better when we weren't making any money."
Boosting Your Bottom Line
Whether an annaul income of $100,000 is with-in your reach, experts say there are steps many peopl can take to boost their earnings, often without too much pain. Here are some ideas:
Become more specialized. Remember that benefit you heard about on your first day of work, the one called tuition reimbursement? That, plus your company's training programs, can help you increase your skill level and, in turn, increase your earning potential.
Consider working a different shift. Night shifts, for example, often pay a premium, known as a differential. It's a good way to "goose up an otherwise ordinary salary," says Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com.
Teach something that you know. Colleges often are looking for experts in various fields to serve as adjunct professors or lecturers.
Take something you know and look for a related income stream. Coleman knows a man from the Boston area who loves to fish. He went fishing each weekend on Cape Cod, and sold the fish so he could earn enough to buy a boat.
Take a fresh look at all those "treasures" in the closet and in the attic and then log on to an online auction site.
To see more Newsday content, or to subscribe, go to www.newsday.com.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
what would you have done different if you knew this?
-jel:halo:
Breaking the $100K Barrier
Patricia Kitchen
Newsday - August 11, 2002
At one time in his career, Fred Geling would have been known as a grease monkey.
Now he heads a team of highly skilled auto technicians at Habberstad BMW in Huntington Station. And two years ago, his salary did what he never dreamed of when he was a 14-year-old tinkering with a 1949 Studebaker. It crossed the $100,000-a-year mark.
"It makes you feel like you're up there with everybody else," said Geling, 56, of St. James.
More than a few people in unlikely lines of work have crossed the six-figure threshold that once seemed reserved for business executives and highly educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers and investment bankers. While still far from the norm, such salaries are becoming more common for select teachers, cops, nurses and various blue-collar types.
What are the forces driving such salaries? Experts say factors include more complex jobs that call for more skills; a paucity of workers in certain key industries; and overtime, which especially goes up during lean economic times such as these when businesses demand more of their workers rather than expand their staffs.
Men outnumber women among six-figure earners. Data just released from the U.S. Census Bureau show 315,200 men in New York State topping $100,000 in earnings compared with 83,400 women. That's 5.5 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, of all those who worked full-time and year-round in 1999.
Those figures include the likely suspects such as doctors and lawyers but also workers in Geling's position whose jobs have become increasingly complex.
"We have to wipe out the old picture," said Gary Huth, labor analyst for the New York State Labor Department. "Some jobs have become high-skilled but are still caught in the image of low-skill, low-wage." As Geling knows too well, "It's not your grandfather's auto shop anymore," Huth said.
Novices who hope to enter the automotive field and leave schooling behind have another think coming, Geling said. Each year the technology is becoming more sophisticated and complex, not just for BMWs but for all makes.
Look at what he sees as the leader of the pack - the BMW 745 model that came out this year. It has a computer screen on the dashboard that controls the radio, telephone, heating, air conditioning and navigational systems. Technicians get two weeks of schooling to learn how to service this model alone. And they don't speak of simply repairing anymore. It's "diagnosing," said Geling, the service manager. "This is a thinking person's world," not unlike that of a physician with a specialty. Gone are the days when a monkey wrench was the primary tool.
He knows of plenty of six-figure technicians at other dealerships, though he has none working for him at the moment, as his staff is young. He said he would be glad to bring onboard a seasoned, factory-trained technician at that level.
For the most part, techs' earnings are based on each job they do. If a job is expected to take four hours, but the tech does it in two, he or she still gets paid for the four hours. So their earnings are based on speed and expertise.
Still, Geling sees high-paying jobs go begging. A help-wanted ad he placed recently garnered only about a dozen calls. Why? For one thing, car dealers are paying their technicians well to stay put. And many young people who might once have gone into automotive work have opted for computer training instead.
When he was coming of age, he was lured by "the love of the automobile." Today's cars, for the most part, are seen just as modes of transportation.
Here are some other types of jobs that can pay $100,000 or more that aren't traditionally thought of as high-paying:
Police officers. Almost 1,300 Nassau County officers, 46.2 percent of the force, topped $100,000 in taxable income last year, and in Suffolk County more than 1,600 out of about 2,500 officers, detectives and supervisors made six figures. In Northport Village, the average salary of patrol officers is $104,200 before overtime, said Mayor Peter Panarites.
"I like to see everyone make a fair and living wage, but I think with the police union and binding arbitration, things have gotten way out of hand," Panarites said.
Last year, five civilian tradesmen doing non-Sept. 11 related work for the New York City Police Department earned more than $100,000 each in overtime alone.
Insulators and asbestos workers, who earn a top range of $80,000 a year, can hit six figures by working weekends or holidays at double time, though it's certainly not the norm. "It may not be the healthiest job in the world, but the money's clean," said Dennis Ippolito, business manager of Local 12, Heat and Frost Insulator and Asbestos Workers.
Experienced dental technologists, those behind-the-scenes laboratory workers who create ceramic crowns and other dental appliances, can bring in six figures, said Nicholas Manos, a professor at New York City College of Technology, which offers associate's degrees in the field. While he sees 100-percent job placement each year among dental technologists, he said "the average person doesn't even know we exist."
Administrative assistants, for the most part pulling in $50,000 to $70,000 in the New York area, can hit the jackpot when they support the topmost executives in major companies. As Huth pointed out, these jobs, too, have morphed into something much more complex, involving spreadsheet analysis, sales data preparation and event planning, and often leading to titles that have little to do with the old title "secretary."
But less than 1 percent of the 40,000 members of the International Association of Administrative Professionals earn at least $100,000, said its communications manager Rick Stroud. "Three cheers for them," he said. "We wish it happened more."
Such salaries come as no surprise to Walter Gowens, a certified financial planner with Prudential Vanguard Financial Services in Manhattan. In the past three to five years, he has seen blue-collar clients in the six-figure category rise from about 5 percent to 15 percent of his business, among them a number of telephone and fax line installers, as well as aircraft maintenance workers.
On the other hand, one person who was surprised to find everyday people in this salary range is Barbara Stanny, author of "Secrets of Six-Figure Women" (HarperCollins, $23.95). When her agent first suggested she tackle the topic, Stanny, a motivational speaker and former journalist, expected to discover that "to make big money you had to have a Harvard MBA and wear designer suits ... be out-of-my-league kind of women."
She found that was not the case. Though many of her interviews were with lawyers, doctors, consultants and investment bankers, she also spoke with writers, teachers, musicians - even a matchmaker and a psychic.
"For every woman who had a PhD or MBA, there were more that had an associate's degree or no college at all and that didn't stop them," Stanny said.
She found that all her interviewees had one thing in common: At some point, each made what she calls a "declaration of intention" that found them saying, "It's time to make some money. ... They developed a profit motive. When they had no profit motive, they gave their time away."
While making $100,000 is a dream come true for some, it does come with caveats. A big one is the fact that "$100,000 isn't really big money," especially in the New York metropolitan area with its high cost of living, said Charles Peck, a compensation expert with the Conference Board, a business research organization in Manhattan.
And there are potential downsides for those whose big salaries depend on overtime: Working long hours can deprive workers of family and community time, as well as the chance to get further skills training, said Brian M. McLaughlin, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, a consortium of 375 unions.
He said he hears of some big earners among building trades workers, theatrical and stage employees, machinists and aerospace workers, though six figures is "not indicative of the average earnings."
Employers may "use overtime as an attractive selling tool," he said, "but it [sometimes] obscures the inadequacy of base pay. ... Working people shouldn't be paying their rent or mortgages based on overtime."
Verlia M. Brown, a surgical intensive care nurse, concurs. Even though she has been hovering at the $100,000 mark for the past three years, she does it by supplementing her 37.5-hour-a-week head nurse's job at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn with an average of two 12-hour shifts a week at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
Experienced and well-educated nurses should be able to make $100,000 with no added shifts, she said, in view of the stress level they're under as well as the importance of their work. That's why she also serves on the city nurses' contract negotiating committee for the New York State Nurses Association. The money is good, she said, "but could be a lot better."
Yet she didn't envision earning such a healthy paycheck back in 1974 when she got started in her profession at a salary of $9,500 a year.
"I'm not rich. I just work hard," said Brown, who describes the rewards of that labor: the ability to put down a 25 percent deposit on her home in Wantagh, shopping at Fortunoff's, visiting her native Jamaica, along with other spots around the world. "I want to live in a nice neighborhood," she said, and "I like nice things."
She bemoans the fact that some people place a higher value on the work of athletes such as Derek Jeter and Michael Jordan - entertainers, she said. "To me that's frivolous. Nurses save lives, but people still think all they do is push bedpans and give out pain medication."
Teaching also has been traditionally associated with ho-hum wages, but some veteran teachers on Long Island - those with 60 to 90 credits past a master's degree and 20 to 35 years' experience - can reach the six-figure mark.
The public's impression, said Lynn Costello, retired president of the East Islip Teachers Association, is, "'Maybe it's a hard job, maybe it's an important job, but we can get people cheaper. ... A lot will do it for the love of the job and they don't want that much money.' Which, by the way, means women," said Costello, who started his career 38 years ago, when it was legal to pay women less than men.
The teachers who get there, he said, arrive at the six-figure level much later in their careers than those in other professions. Having just crossed the threshold himself two years ago, this former government and history teacher points to more than 50 teachers in his district who achieved the same salary, with 37 of them just retiring, too.
"There's this idea," Costello said, "that you shouldn't be in a job to make money. It should be closer to a religious experience. ... The public liked us a lot better when we weren't making any money."
Boosting Your Bottom Line
Whether an annaul income of $100,000 is with-in your reach, experts say there are steps many peopl can take to boost their earnings, often without too much pain. Here are some ideas:
Become more specialized. Remember that benefit you heard about on your first day of work, the one called tuition reimbursement? That, plus your company's training programs, can help you increase your skill level and, in turn, increase your earning potential.
Consider working a different shift. Night shifts, for example, often pay a premium, known as a differential. It's a good way to "goose up an otherwise ordinary salary," says Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation for Salary.com.
Teach something that you know. Colleges often are looking for experts in various fields to serve as adjunct professors or lecturers.
Take something you know and look for a related income stream. Coleman knows a man from the Boston area who loves to fish. He went fishing each weekend on Cape Cod, and sold the fish so he could earn enough to buy a boat.
Take a fresh look at all those "treasures" in the closet and in the attic and then log on to an online auction site.
To see more Newsday content, or to subscribe, go to www.newsday.com.
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
what would you have done different if you knew this?
-jel:halo: