The New Eco­nom­ics Foun­da­tion has released a report com­par­ing var­i­ous jobs in terms of the soci­etal value they destroy or gen­er­ate (pdf).

The report was pro­duced to start “a fun­da­men­tal rethink of how the value of work is recog­nised and rewarded”—specifically by cre­at­ing a rela­tion­ship between jobs that cre­ate a ben­e­fit for soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment and their compensation.

The BBC looks at the report and has pro­duced a sum­mary of the find­ings:

  • Waste work­ers: Cre­ate £12 of value for every £1 they are paid.
  • Hos­pi­tal clean­ers: Cre­ate over £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.
  • Child­care work­ers: Cre­ate £9.50 worth of ben­e­fits for every £1 they are paid.
  • City bankers: Destroy £7 of value for every £1 they generate.
  • Senior adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives: Destroy £11 of value for every £1 they generate.
  • Tax accoun­tants: Destroy £47 for every £1 generated.

In addi­tion to these figures:

  • Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives “cre­ate stress, […] dis­sat­is­fac­tion and mis­ery, and encour­age over-consumption, […] high spend­ing and indebt­ed­ness. [They also] cre­ate insa­tiable aspi­ra­tions, fuelling feel­ings of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, inad­e­quacy and stress.”
  • Waste work­ers “pro­mote recycling”.
  • Child­care work­ers “cre­ate net wealth to the coun­try [by releas­ing] earn­ings poten­tial by allow­ing par­ents to con­tinue working”.

I can’t help feel­ing that these results are largely swayed by the pub­lic opin­ion* and that the six jobs com­pared by NEF were cho­sen due to their poten­tial for con­tro­versy (read: pub­lic­ity) and incor­rect interpretation.

How­ever I did like the ten myths of pay and value (fur­ther infor­ma­tion in the report):

  1. The City of Lon­don is essen­tial for the UK economy.
  2. Low paid jobs cre­ate a lad­der for peo­ple to work their way up — oppor­tu­ni­ties to advance are open to all.
  3. Pay dif­fer­en­tials don’t mat­ter, so long as we erad­i­cate poverty.
  4. We need to pay high salaries to attract and retain tal­ent in the UK.
  5. Work­ers in highly paid jobs work harder.
  6. The pri­vate sec­tor is more effi­cient than the pub­lic sector.
  7. If we tax the rich, they will take their money and run.
  8. The rich con­tribute more to society.
  9. Some jobs are more sat­is­fy­ing, so they require less pay.
  10. Pay always rewards under­ly­ing profitability.

* I imag­ine the results would have been quite dif­fer­ent a few years ago when we were in the midst of a bull mar­ket and MRSA infec­tion rates were high and promi­nent in the news.