There Are 5,000 Janitors in the U.S. with PhDs!

BS , there are 5000 PHD's in Boulder working as janitors , parking lot attendants , waiters.....

Which is why you get such crappy service in Boulder. Everyone has an attitude because they are too good for their wait staff job.

One sided wrote:

BS , there are 5000 PHD's in Boulder working as janitors , parking lot attendants , waiters.....

What field are the PHDs in? I am guessing probably something useless like Education, Art History, or Ancient Egyptian Studies.

D3 thurt todlm wrote:

There are definitely more than 100,000 janitors in this country. I don't trust any of the stats in this thread, starting with the titlee.

Yep. There are 98,817 public schools in the country, so schools alone have to employ well over 100,000 janitors (every school I've attended employed multiple janitors). Then you also have janitors working at universities, municipal buildings, office/retail buildings, and all kinds of other places. There are probably states with more than 100,000 janitors.

The egalitarian agenda is to reduce people of ability to poverty. They are succeeding.

The reason many people in this country have sucky jobs is that they are not willing to move. The end.

Exactly. That's what always cracks me up about the Lefties making claims about "more educated" individuals and where they live/how they vote. Yeah, no sh!t, because in many useless fields, you HAVE to get a PhD to even get the job in the first place. All education is not created equal. Get an undergrad degree, then get a "real" job, THEN decide if you need more school or want to work in academia...don't go straight through to the PhD level in a useless field, and then still be unemployable with no real world experience. Who do these people think they are?

Matt Damon wrote:

What field are the PHDs in? I am guessing probably something useless like Education, Art History, or Ancient Egyptian Studies.

When I retire, I want to be a janitor. Seriously. I'm on track for retirement at age 53, and after a couple years off, I plan to get a part-time gig cleaning offices or something like that. Something I can do from say, 5:30am - 9:00am just to make a few bucks and keep busy.

There are 2.5 million people in the US with academic PhDs.

Another way of presenting this statistic is that 0.2% of PhDs are janitors. That's a tiny percentage. Mental illness, injury, preference, citizenship/right to work are just some of the many reasons I can think of why someone with a PhD might work as a janitor

[quote]luv2run wrote:

How many are earned overseas and are not credible?

How many are humanities?

quote]

Bingo.

I am on the board of my daughter's private K-through-9th Grade school and the school "Engineer" is a guy with a PhD from an Ivy League school. I love the guy, he is the best. He gets paid about $150k a year, so he makes decent money, but it is funny to see him driving a school bus, fixing a boiler, mopping a floor, etc. He has been at the school for 25 years and everyone loves him. He has a small team of folks who work for him, all college educated. He certainly doesn't have to do the janitorial duties, but he is right there with the team when they have to clean up vomit, etc.

He spends his Saturday morning on a tractor, mowing the ball fields. He just loves it and earns every penny he makes. I have been on the board for 3 years and his pay increases have been unanimously voted for each year.

luv2run wrote:

How many are earned overseas and are not credible?

How many are humanities?

How many are from diploma mills?

The author notes that perhaps too many go to college. The Bureau figures that 17 million people with a college degree are doing jobs that do not require a college degree (of course some of those might be in transition). When labor laws and court decisions eliminated the ability for a company to test applicants, college degree became a screening process.

Rather than politicians making it easier for people to go to college, it should be more difficult.

It's not just Humanities. You can craft a very specified Ph.D. for yourself in a lot of areas that doesn't necessarily open yourself up for vocation success.

I saw some of the comments there with the story, and several were bashing English degrees. As a guy who works in the business world, let me tell you, MORE people should be forced to get a degree in English along with their other degree. People in this country just can't write well.

The term "janitor" can encompass people that do a whole lot more than change light bulbs and fix broken door handles. Janitors at industrial facilities are almost always engineers who are responsible for very complex HVAC, water a lighting systems. I would not be surprised to find a Phd at a microchip plant or pharmaceutical plant or some other very complex industrial facility.

Also, the numbers are meaningless without knowing whether the janitors are working their jobs as a career or as a temporary measure to keep food on the table. In hard times, people do what they can to eat. My father went to MIT and had two degrees in engineering. He started out fixing TVs for RCA because he got out of school during the 1960 recession. His training was in lasers and advanced guidance systems. He was hired to work at Raytheon a few years later and designed guided missle systems. Thus, the idea that this study shows that higher education shouldn't be a goal is extremely flawed.

Precious Roy wrote:

Also, the numbers are meaningless without knowing whether the janitors are working their jobs as a career or as a temporary measure to keep food on the table.

One could even work as a janitor simply to help out. My church has a weekend custodian who basically just unlocks the doors at the beginning of the day, hangs out in case something happens, and then takes out the trash and locks the door at the end of the day. It's a paying position, but it is usually filled by a retired church member who just wants to help out. We're in a college town, so our Sat/Sun janitor often ends up being a retired professor.

I imagine this is the case for quite a few churches, private schools, and non-profits.