Poor people aren't doing brain work but instead do manual labor etc. It definitely should be a core part of any study to highlight this.
In terms of salary a school teacher would make less or the same as McDonalds worker.
For example, McDonalds Ukraine pays an entry level worker -14 000 UAH ($500) monthly for 40 hours per week. School teacher makes minimum 5000 UAH ($180), +bonus(10-60%). Teacher who was awarded a "highest category" certification (that would be a very experienced one) and who will get all the possible bonuses and raises will make around 14 000 UAH, roughly.
Workers, cleaning personnel would make in the same ballpark 9000 - 14000 UAH ($300-500) at least in Kyiv. Selling phones in the store, work at supermarket also has a similar remuneration.
Average doctor salary (not nurse) is 9000 UAH, at least officially.
The reason is - most those highly skilled and highly educated workers that I've mentioned are paid by the government which does not have funds and desire honestly to treat these people well. They are remnants of decaying public infrastructure - Ukraine has de jure free universal health care and a very big amount of government-funded seats at state universities. Still it is better to work at school than at the factory probably.
You just have a stereotype of how certain things work, everything is not like US/Western Europe structurally. Higher education is not a ticket to a better life everywhere.
How's the new president doing? At first it seemed like a joke, but the little concrete things i've read about him post-election seemed OK.
New president I think is a bit better than the previous three but the whole situation kind of shows two things: 1) There is not much you can do in the country where oligarchs control everything. 2) There is still not much ideas for the future except some sort of a neoliberal 'reaganomics', further privatization and generally disengagement of the state from any meaningful public good iniatives.