Low-paying gigs hard to live on

There is little money to be made by low-end musicians. By low-end I mean the guy who plays piano in Nordstrom's department store or the dude strumming guitar on the schooner tour of some second-rate city's polluted harbor. There is even less cash to be made by musicians in small clubs who many times must guarantee a certain number of patrons otherwise they could actually lose money.

But "real" professions in offices don't seem to be any better these days. As jobs begin to trickle back, I am noticing pay is way down.

I saw a rather typical ad recently from an employer who wants to hire a journalist for a newspaper/web-site operation. The job required candidates to have a four-year degree, be experts in various software such as Photoshop, InDesign and Flash, be able to write sports and news stories, do page layout and manage a couple of part-timers. Weekends and night work was required. The ad said the salary was "competitive." When I checked to see what competitive meant, I found out it was $20,000 a year. And this isn't unusual, particularly in journalism. Makes you wonder why anyone would spend tens of thousands of dollars on a J-school education.

As employers have the upper hand in a bad job market, they are requiring a vast array of skills. This is not all that unusual in journalism jobs, but the salaries being offered are what folks could have expected 25 years ago with a degree and maybe a year or two of experience. The pay is so low that you might as well take that gig singing Van Morrison tunes at the tacky airport hotel lounge. Cubicle work certainly isn't that much more lucrative these days.

Of course, employers are like anyone else -- they tend to get what they pay for. Even though the market is flooded with fairly talented folks who would be willing to lower their salary demands, it's not always the best move to hire inexperienced folks or people with questionable work histories just to save a buck. That bargain-basement employee in the long run might not be such a good idea if your company ends up being sued for libel or some form of malpractice.