Sometimes, I see people comparing office desk jobs salaries with what janitors and cleaning personnel earn.
Let’s say you work an entry-level job and you compare with what a cleaning person earns. It might look like if the earnings are comparable, you have a bad deal.
But there are some important criteria for which the salary does not tell the whole picture:
- Debatable, but if you have a job that requires you to sit at a desk, this means you tend to have a healthier life; it might be unhealthy to stand up and work most of the day;
- You have a better social status;
- Working indoors with chemical substances all day can’t be that good for your health;
- An office job generally leads to better future job opportunities than working as a cleaner;
- You tend to use your brain a lot in an office job, which might help future jobs;
- Finally, you generally tend to earn a bit more; even if it’s not a lot, it’s still more than the cleaner job.
All-in-all, I think the above are important advantages of doing office work, even a bit boring one, rather than a cleaning job.
Regarding risks of being overtaken by artificial intelligence (AI) and/or robots, generally entry-level jobs tend to be the first to go. So, some robots might remove some cleaning workers’ jobs, while some AI programs might replace some entry-level office jobs.
