Up and Down 17th Street: Stagnant pay? Try pest control or massage

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Workers whose wages are stuck in neutral may want to check out Labor Department data and commentary for career-changing ideas.

It turns out there are plenty of occupations - jobs most people never would have considered - where pay has hardly been stagnant.

Take pest control workers. The median hourly pay for tracking down and destroying or repelling roaches, rats, mice, termites and other creatures in Colorado was about $15 last year. By contrast, median pest hunter pay was $7.48 in 2000, according to the state Department of Labor and Employment.

Sure, it's not glamorous, and there are potential health risks posed by toxic chemicals, but demand for pest workers is expected to rise with population growth and construction activity, the U.S. Labor Department's latest "occupational outlook handbook" suggests.

Massage therapy also is a profession to ponder, with a median hourly wage of about $20 in 2005, compared with $13.21 in 2000, the figures from the labor department show. The 2005 and 2000 comparisons are not perfect, state economists acknowledge, because a lot of the data overlap from year to year. But they still reveal interesting trends.

Massage should stay hot, if labor department researchers are right. The health care industry is using massage more often to supplement conventional treatments, the handbook says. Also, businesses increasingly use it as a perk for employees, and rising numbers of senior citizens are discovering the benefits.

Podiatrists, tax preparers and engine assemblers also have experienced large increases in wages. Petroleum technicians have seen big pay hikes, too. Physicians and surgeons ($63.12 an hour), industrial and organizational psychologists ($49.69) and air-traffic controllers ($55.92) are among the highest-paying professions, looking at median wages.

Meanwhile, interior designers, tailors and costume attendants - who assist performers - saw wages slip sharply between 2000 and 2005, according to the labor department data.

The occupational handbook - www.bls. gov/oco/ - offers a wealth of information about every job sector you can imagine and directs users to state labor department Web sites across the country. (Colorado's site doesn't provide 2000 wage data. We had to ask for that.)

In case you're considering becoming a sports star, the handbook even provides an outlook for professional athletes.

"Competition for professional athlete jobs will continue to be extremely intense," the handbook's authors stated. "Athletes must have extraordinary talent, desire and dedication to training."

There's always a more realistic option, trying to get a gig as an umpire or referee. But those jobs "face possible physical assault and, increasingly, lawsuits from injured athletes based on their officiating decisions."

James Paton and David Milstead take turns writing Up and Down 17th Street. Contact Paton at patonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2544.