Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

From the headline I had incorrectly guessed this would be just NYC, it's the entire state.

  The top 20 jobs for earning a living wage range from podiatrists (81.3%) to plant operators (68.7%). The bottom 20 include cashiers (13.5%), dishwashers (8.3%) and textile machine operators (3.9%).

I don't understand how podiatrists isn't at 100%, WikiPedia has the pay at about what you'd expect a Dr to make. What's that ~20% doing wrong? Just bad at answering this survey or are they really making so little being a Dr?

  The median annual podiatric physician salary in the United States was approximately $215,000 as of July 2022, with a wide range depending on years in practice. New podiatrists usually earn significantly less. First-year salaries around $150,000 with performance and productivity incentives are common. Private practice revenues for solo podiatrists vary widely, with the majority of solo practices grossing between $200,000 and $600,000 before overhead

It’s less likely that they’re doing something ‘wrong’, and more likely that factors such as household size and living location drive up the overall cost of living past what potentially their single salary can withstand. A single-earner with a spouse and kid to support living in Manhattan can struggle to keep up even with a $150k+ salary.

Rents and basic living expenses(ie. Food) in particular have spiked citywide since the pandemic, which further exacerbates the issue.

Yes a single expensive chronic medical condition or child with high support needs disability will wipe that right out. $150k isn't poverty anywhere I don't think but it's not rare at all to end up professionally & personally tied to an expensive area with obligations that make it difficult for you to make it work.

This isn't an actual survey of people though. Cornell is saying "The living wage for this county is $xx,000, and xx% of people make less than $xx,000 in this county." They're comparing a range of incomes against essentially the fixed median cost of living.

Consider again that this is the whole state, not just NYC. Much of New York state is badly economically depressed and has been for a long time: Troy, Poughkeepsie, Utica, Binghamton, etc.

> I don’t understand how podiatrists isn’t at 100%?

Maybe residency accounts for some of it? Could also be a significant number of solo practices just getting started? (Gross numbers might be unintuitive or misleading for doctors renting or buying office space and trying to advertise.) Could also be anomalies in the survey, noise in the data and/or how they categorize jobs, perhaps some number of reported podiatrists are podiatry assistants who are in school? Could be some podiatrists choose to serve low income and/or uninsured folks? Maybe a weighted combination of all the above and some other factors?

Perhaps it's an issue with the survey, or those who answered Podiatrist when they're actually in their residency.

At least they included that data, allowing us to calibrate a figure like “40%” which in reality is probably much lower

Possibly retired individuals who still do e.g. speaking work or university work, but don't have patients.

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