A-ha

A couple of weeks ago news of a salary and stress survey made its way through the Methodist Musicians news list. The reason: church musicians placed 5th in a list of stressful jobs that pay poorly. Top of the list (the most stressful job that pays poorly) was "social worker." Next came "special events coordinator," "parole officer" and "news reporter." Next was church musician. The survey was done by PayScale.com and reported by CNNMoney.

Named in the article as one aspect of the job that provokes stress was providing music for worship services at critical times in peoples' lives: weddings and funeral." The article didn't name what I think is the obvious, and most pervasive stress-inducer: the weekly challenge of selecting music for worship that appeals to the performers, suits the tastes of the congregation, is not too loud, is not too dissonant, is in a major key (see my post at BMPCNC Muz).

The survey was conducted by PayScale.com. Here's their explanation of the scope of the survey:

(Payscale.com) defined high stress and low pay jobs: Starting from a database of over 2000 jobs, Payscale used data from over 36,000 respondents who ranked their jobs for quality of life factors, and chose those requiring a bachelor's degree or higher where the national median pay is less than $65,000. The survey was conducted between Aug 10, 2009 and Oct. 1, 2009.

I took a look at the PayScale.com site and took their rating survey. My salary ranked in the 45 percentile for my field. I think that means 55% of my colleagues earn more than me; and that my salary is 5 percentage points off the average salary for my field. I also discovered that persons holding my academic degree (Master of Divinity) have an average salary nearly $12,000 more than my current salary. I wonder of that's what changing careers, even if it was 20 years ago seems to get you.