For What it's Worth

I believe in a higher power. A higher earning power that is. The scripture that affirms this for me is that Sunday bible, Parade Magazine, and its annual “What People Earn” issue.

I typically toss Parade in the Sunday circular recycle pile, but not when all those stamp-sized photos appear on the cover, with people’s jobs and corresponding salaries revealed for all the world to see. I love this issue—all those normal, smiling faces from normal small towns with mostly normal jobs and somewhat predictable salaries. They look like folks you might see at the mall, only their wallets are exposed.

There’s Stu Jones in his white coat, a capable looking physician’s assistant from Franklin, Tennessee, pulling in $109,000. And Katherine Capizzi from West Paterson, New Jersey, a school nurse with reassuring eyes, doling out Tylenol to the tune of $88,000. Katherine Nelson, a judge in Port Lucie, Florida, looks like she could afford a better hair colorist given that she’s making $137,000. And the somewhat weary but jovial looking Deborah Coley-Lee, a school lunch room worker in Dolton, Illinois, whose kids no doubt qualify for free lunch since she earns all of $5,300.

It’s so American, so comforting, in a sense, to have what’s typically taboo in common conversation so transparently on parade. And yet I find it discomforting, too. The salary numbers read like price tags—look, Jesse Campbell, an architect with artsy glasses, is going for six figures, while Beverly Smith, an anemic librarian, is a downright bargain at $21,500. And no wonder Julia Roberts has a mile-wide smile; her asking price is astronomical. Parade’s layout, with its row-by-row of mugs, looks like an innocuous high school yearbook, but the numbers change the tone—suddenly Stu, Katherine and Deborah, and you and me by extension, are simply marketplace commodities. Even more unsettling is the cover call-out, the question accompanying each year’s spread: “How did you do?” it asks in big, bold font. Well, of course, that depends. How did I do meeting deadlines and making dinner? Hit or miss, most days I usually manage just one or the other. How did I do staying sane with three kids in three schools and three steady work gigs, plus numerous occasional projects? Better ask my husband. Or what about, how did I do finding work that is meaningful and challenging? I’d give a thumbs up, but that’s not what Parade is asking. The question boils down to how does my income stack up, subtly suggesting that this is how I stack up—that somewhere in the stack, self worth and net worth collide. For what it’s worth, Parade suggests I stack up much closer to Jeff Bosley, the donut fryer from Crofton, Maryland, than to Julia Roberts. No surprise there; I prefer donuts to chick flicks anyway.

Recently I had tea and little tea sandwiches with a lovely woman about 10 years my senior, who’d graduated from high school near my hometown and gone on to have an accomplished business career. Catchy phrases like “CEO” and “Fortune 500” topped her resume. Then she was “let go,” as they say, and offered a 21-million-dollar severance. Now I’m not good with numbers and get dizzy looking at too many zeros, but I did some quick math and realized this poised, intelligent, likable gal got paid about 20 times more for getting fired than I may ever earn in an entire lifetime of working. And while I was sitting a cozy three feet away from her, I did what Parade knows we all do—I sized her up, and stacked us both up, and felt queasy.

I don’t begrudge, for too long at least, those who can work the corporate system and maximize personal profi t. I simply glaze over when I hear a number like 21 million; I can’t count that high. But I do question the system, this out-of-whack economic amusement park, where what some people earn can have such distorted relationship to the value of what they actually do. Is anyone’s time really worth any more or any less than anyone else’s? Don’t even get me started on teachers’ pay, or lack thereof. The word “compensate,” however, stems from the root pendere, to weigh, “to weigh against another.”

The editors of Parade understand this.

The “What People Earn” issue is one of Parade’s most popular special issues—their equivalent of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, only people are objectified by job profile and salary, not by body type, and a multi-million dollar income equals buff and thin. I wonder what drives this cultural (and, I admit, my personal) fascination with financial voyeurism? Would a special issue featuring head-and-shoulder pics with corresponding IQ have similar appeal? Or what about a “What People Give” issue, where mug shots are paired with the percentage of annual income donated to charity? I doubt advertisers would be beating down the door.

Why do I care what colleagues and competitors make? Because I’ve bought into the belief that income somehow says something about the worth of my work, when in fact, the worth is in the work itself. Yes, there are bills, college funds and escalating gas prices to fret about, and $21 million might be nice. But a job’s value ideally is measured less by income than by outcome. Dignity in work and the reward in contributing talent and effort toward creating a more just and healthy community don’t show up on a W-2 form, but the payoff is understanding that self worth never has any connection to net worth. At least that’s what the fired CEO said.

~Stephanie Hunt

Stephanie Hunt is a freelance writer in Mt. Pleasant, SC, whose first job was delivering newspapers on cold, dark mornings for about $20 a month.