Williston salaries show pure supply and demand
July 8, 2012 at 4:54 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The Oil Patch right now is an hothouse of labor economics, with salaries running riot under the twin lamps of supply and demand. Some salaries, that is; others, including teachers’ salaries, haven’t much changed. Continue Reading
and in 10 years where will that 90 grand a year high school dropout be working?
Its all about choice.
If these teachers want more money they can give up their tenure and hit the oil fields.
when the job goes away they can start over in a po-dunk school system building their worthless tenure back up again.
Your college degree allows you Unionized protection from being fired for being incompetent and pay raises even if youre worthless at your job.
Teachers made their choice of career with full knowledge of what it paid.
It gets old listening to them cry about how little they make.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Hooray for the Herald and Capt. Amerika. The key to the article is the observation that the school district is not having a problem filling positions with qualified applicants. If the school district was having a problem filling positions with qualified candidates this would be a different story. While teaching is hard work and isn’t my choice of profession, until there is a lack of qualified candidates the pay doesn’t need to increase. There appears to be more than enough qualified people interested in teaching for the current level of compensation when Williston, with all of its housing issues and inflated cost of living, isn’t having a difficulty filling positions.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Amen! Well said Capt.!
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Well said Capt Amerika. And, based on the like/dislike ratio, the majority of people are getting fed up with teachers complaining about, well, everything. And, with the US continually declining globally in education, a salary decrease, not increase, is in order.
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For years ND school districts have gotten by low-balling teacher salaries by claiming a lower cost of living. I wonder if they’ll use that to now raise salaries. As for a surplus of applications, that will end when teachers discover their salaries won’t make it in an a area where burger flippers are starting at $15/hr.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Gene, I think you need to give teachers a little more credit than you have. You’d have to be pretty dense if you applied for a job in Williston and didn’t know about the inflated cost of living and housing shortage. Teachers are not dumb and I suspect that a majority of those applying know what is going on in Williston.
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Seriously Gene? You believe that after at least four years of college school districts are hiring teachers that are so clueless that they can’t figure out to look at the cost of living or availability of housing? Keep in mind that there is an interview process so at some point before they are hired they do take a trip to Williston. Do you think that the school district doesn’t clue them in? Gene, if that is the quality of new teachers than I’d suggest they are overpaid from the start. I personally don’t believe that all new teachers are that daft or dumb. There are simply a lot of people who like the intangible benefits of teaching despite the level of compensation. Like I said in my earlier post, it is a hard profession and not my choice, but I have a lot of friends that do teach and they wouldn’t trade increased compensation for their extended holidays or summer breaks; they would of course welcome more compensation if it were offered.
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College students have lived a cacoon for at least 4 years. Talk to them about subjects you and I would take for granted. They haven’t been prepared in the least for the real world. As I said, their mindset is to get that first job and start paying off debt. God forbid they already are married and have a family. They may go to Williston and listen to the caveats; they just don’t compute. Anymore than if you were to discuss deep in the money call options with them.
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The reason you would want to get a teaching job in Williston is so you can have someone else find you housing and then your spouse is free to get an oil job.
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Well, the age old teacher pay issue aside, I’m just glad the oil thing is out there. Judging by all the negatives that go along with the money – housing and school issues, increased crime, murder, etc. – they can have it. I hope as our city council goes after some of the good stuf they don’t loose eight of the bad that could come with it.
Money isn’t everything.
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Steve, the ND Attorney General’s Office just released a report confirming that the crime rate in the oil production counties is no different per capita than in other parts of North Dakota. There are more crimes being committed, but that is only because the population has increased significantly; crime rates have stayed the same.
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Mark, the point of the article was not to bash teachers; teachers were simply used as an illustration of the idea of supply and demand. In Williston a young person willing to work in the oil fields, engage in hard physical labor and endure harsh conditions can make a fantastic living without higher education (at least for the next few years). There is a demand for people to fill those jobs and a limited supply of people willing to do it. In contrast the local school district isn’t having any problem filling positions with qualified candidates. This article couldn’t be written about law enforcement because, like oil field workers, local law enforcement is having a difficult time filling positions. The article uses teachers only for the purpose of illustrating the principle of supply and demand. Unlike oil field workers, there are more qualified people seeking teaching jobs than there are open positions.
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I think clueless is the only explanation as to why some (not all) teachers complain about their salaries. If they knew their salary when choosing their careers, then why are they now complaining? And if they did not know their salary range when they chose their professions, then I do not want them anywhere near my kids.
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