If I were to lose my job as a full-time staffer at Forbes, I wouldn’t starve, according to a new list put out by CareerCast, the ten-year-old job search website based in Carlsbad, CA. CareerCast, which compiles lists I report on periodically, including America’s best and worst jobs, most and least stressful jobs and best jobs for people with disabilities, has just released a list of 10 jobs it says are the best for part-timers. The U.S. had more than 27 million people working part-time in January 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so at least in theory, a lot of people will be interested in this list.
My profession, Writers/Authors, makes the top 10. According to figures culled from the BLS, the median hourly wage for people who work part-time in my profession is $27 and the hiring outlook between 2012 and 2022 is 3%. “That job is on the list because of the Internet,” says CareerCast publisher Tony Lee. “The need for high-quality, original content is so huge there’s been a dramatically rising demand for writers who are able to create original content.”
I take Lee’s point though a measly 3% increase in hiring doesn’t exactly make me feel secure. Not to sound hubristic but the explosion of online publishing also means that I’d be competing with zillions of people who are self-appointed writers with a fraction of my training and experience, and I suspect the part-time marketplace, which is mostly looking for cheap, competent labor, doesn’t much care about my résumé. I took a look at ifreelance.com and found that there are 99 people offering their services as writers and editors and only four projects looking for writers, including an outfit that is offering—I kid you not—one cent a word for a series of 20-50-word write-ups for an auction website. This dates me but I remember 25 years ago that my freelancer friends were getting a minimum of a dollar a word (do the inflation calculation and that’s $1.79 today). I had a freelance gig for the AARP magazine once that paid $3 a word. Though some Forbes bloggers are compensated based on the frequency and traffic of their posts, indeed, many write for zero compensation (though many have day jobs that pay them well).
I would be better off if I knew how to program computers ($36 an hour), could do computer systems and network administration ($35) or management analysis ($38). CareerCast also includes some jobs that don’t pay much more than minimum wage, like movers ($11) and proofreaders ($16). Movers make the list because of the growth outlook for the profession, of 10% by 2012, while proofreaders supposedly get work from those Internet jobs that Lee was telling me about. I take issue with that too, since at least at Forbes.com, the majority of copy isn’t proofread.
I’m poking some holes in CareerCast’s list as I cover it because in the past I’ve gotten major pushback from readers about some of its lists, which Lee concedes include an element of subjectivity. My worst experience came two years ago when I covered the site’s list of least stressful jobs. No. 1 on the list was “university professor.” I wound up with a whopping 574 comments, mostly angry testimonials from professors who toil 18-hour days including on weekends and even Christmas day, with the burdensome responsibilities of committees, mentoring, pressure to publish, coming up with curricula and, most stressful it seems to me, landing grant funding for their own work. Adjuncts make even less per hour then lowly-paid writers and editors. At least when CareerCast put out its list the following year it singled out only tenured professors, who at least are compensated reasonably and don’t live in fear of losing their jobs.
The other list for which I’ve gotten significant and smart blowback is CareerCast’s roster of best jobs for people with disabilities. The most sobering comments were from disability advocates who admonished me for even publishing the list, asserting that people with disabilities should not restrict their employment outlook to jobs geared toward people with special needs but should aim at and fight for jobs that anyone can do. Wrote commenter Tracy Katz, “I am offended by the many assumptions about ability, painted by a very large brush stroke, that takes any job off the table (ie chef or flight attendant) for people with disabilities. It is a very slippery slope to assume that certain jobs would not be appropriate for such a diverse group of individuals. The other criteria mentioned are simply insulting and isolating (limited social contact for individuals on the Autism Spectrum, which includes Aspergers, for example).”
So with many caveats, I am presenting this list of best part-time jobs. Lee says his data team relied on a list of the jobs with the most part-timers and filtered it with its best and worst jobs list before sorting it with subjective criteria. For the best and worst list, CareerCast examines 200 professions, focusing on 11 different job demands, from what they call emotional factors like the degree of competitiveness and the amount of public contact (both viewed as negatives), to physical demands including crawling, stooping and bending and work conditions like toxic fumes and noise. In addition to income and growth potential in the field, they look at what they call stress factors, like the amount of travel the job requires, deadlines, and physical risks like whether the workers’ or their colleagues’ lives are put at risk on the job and autonomy (a positive). You can read about the methodology here.
Autonomy is one element that may be tough to measure in the part-time world. You’d think that someone not tethered to a desk for 40 or 60 hours a week would feel a kind of giddy joy, especially if they had been working regular hours for years. But in many part-time jobs your time is not your own. You come in when the employer demands it.
For the complete list of CareerCast’s best part-time jobs, see our slideshow above. Though CareerCast doesn’t rank the jobs I’ve put them in order of compensation.
