Do ad people make less than educators?
Shira (a fictitious art director) works in advertising. She makes 100k a year. That’s a good chunk of money.
100K
But let’s calculate her salary in terms of amount of HOURS worked compared to an educator. Let’s say Shira, like educators, didn’t have to work for the spring, summer and winter breaks. That’s 3 months of no work and no pay. Which amounts to three months of no salary. Her yearly pay would reduce by a quarter.
75K
Educators work from 8am-3pm a day or 35 hours a week. Shira works an average 70 hours a week which includes all the weekends she has to give up with alarming regularity.
But If Shira worked only 35 hours (like an educator), and got paid for just that amount of time her salary would drop by half.
37.5K
Now Shira does get 2 weeks vacation, so lets add another 4.5K back in.
Shira makes 42K.
An educator makes 50K.
Holy shit. Shira earns 8000 dollars less than the lowest paid educator.
Why has Shira decided to get burnt out in advertising? If she wants to lose her sanity she could earn more teaching middle school kids.
If she wants to earn more than an educator Shira needs to learn to do more work in less amount of time.
She can do it if she cuts down on the number of emails, meetings, and other donkey work. Also forgo all office politics. She can spend the time saved to do side projects that feed her creative well. And then she will have more fun at work which makes working in advertising totally worthwhile.
