The Benefits of a Job

 The Benefits of a Job

What are the benefits of a job? Well, of course, when most people think of a job, they think of it as a way to make money. A job can be one where a person provides a service, like car repair, painting, massage therapy, gardening, cleaning, plastic surgery, etc. Anything that other people are willing to pay you to do is a job.

Different jobs pay different amounts of money, depending on a person’s skill level, the demand other people have for their services, and probably where they live. Different countries, states, cities, and neighborhoods pay people differently. Did you know that the minimum wage in California is nearly $15 an hour, and in Alabama, it’s $7?

People need to make enough money to pay for their regular living expenses, like rent or a house payment, car insurance and gasoline, the electric bill, the phone bill, food, medical care, and other things to keep themselves alive and healthy. It’s also a good idea for a person with a job to save a little money every month for unexpected expenses, or if they get hurt or become ill for more than a few days.

If a person is hard-working, smart, eager to learn, honest, is a person who can get to their job on time, and is helpful, that person should not have a hard time getting a job, even one that pays pretty well. People like this should always make sure they get the best job they are eligible to do.

Let’s say you are a person who has all of those skills. If you are, you should be looking for a job that pays well, and also has good benefits. But when you hear people talk about the benefits of a job, what are they talking about?

In very simple terms, if you are a high school student looking for a part-time job and you like eating ice cream, a benefit from working at an ice cream parlor besides the pay, would be that you could get free, or discounted ice cream.

If you really like cars, and like to fix up your own car as well as fix up other people’s cars, you might be able to get benefits like free lubricants, repairs, or needed car parts much cheaper than if you had to buy them in another store yourself.

If you’re a person who likes to travel, you might want to work for an airline where one of the benefits would be that you would get to travel as part of your job, and get free seats on airline flights to other destinations when you are not working.

If you like movies, you might want to get a job at a movie theater, where you can get free tickets to the latest movies, and maybe even a free ticket for a friend. It doesn’t hurt that the manager (your boss), might give you half price on all your popcorn and other snacks. Those are definitely benefits that people who like movies enjoy.

People who work in the hospitality industry, meaning, hotels, vacation resorts, cruise ships, and the like get their housing costs included as a benefit. Most people in these jobs also get free or discounted food.

If a young person chooses to join a branch of the military, that recruit may be lured into signing a multi-year commitment contract with the Army, Navy, or other military division because of the benefits offered. Some of the benefits offered to military enlistees include free housing, medical care, travel, money for college, career training, and potentially retirement and Veterans benefits.

If you like animals, you might want to work at a zoo, or for veterinarian, so that you could be around animals most or the time. If you like working with children, you might want to work in childcare, babysitting, after-school programs, or even become a teacher. If you want to help troubled children, you could work as a social worker or psychologist. Doing those things can help you feel good about what you are doing, and that you are helping others. Many people look at this as a benefit. Most people like going home from work with the sense of pride and that they made a difference in other people’s lives each day.

So far, we have talked about free ice cream, cheap auto parts, or that being around animals or children can make the workday enjoyable. We have mentioned that people like to get satisfaction from the work they do and feel like they are helping others. But there are other aspects of benefits that everyone who is entering the job market must be aware of. And this is especially important if you have other people in your family who depend on you. Many jobs offer a benefit package, and this package may include immediate family members.

If you are planning to someday be the head of a household, meaning that you have a spouse and or children, the main benefits you’ll want to be looking for are comprehensive medical care, dental coverage, vision coverage, life insurance, and a retirement package. These benefits will help reduce the expense of going to the doctor or dentist, which can be very expensive. If your child needs an expensive medication on a regular basis, medical pharmaceutical benefits can help pay for those. If the job you get includes these benefits, it’s like making extra money, not unlike getting free ice cream or free movie tickets that you don’t have to pay for.

Let’s talk about time off for the moment, as a benefit. Some jobs don’t offer much in the way of time off, other than a day or two off each week without pay. Other jobs offer better schedules so that people can have time off to spend with their family and do other things that they enjoy, like going to the beach, visiting relatives, going to a theme park out or state, or a cruise in the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean. Most regular jobs offer two or three weeks paid vacation a year. Teachers, because they are following the schedule of the school year, usually get summers off, winter break, spring break, and major holidays. Instead of working more than three-fourths of the days of the year in a regular job, teachers generally work only about half of the days of the year.

Police officers and firefighters in many cities have compressed schedules where they work four days in a row with long ten hour shifts each week, but get the other three days off.

Growing in a job is another major benefit that many people in a career enjoy. A career is different from a job because it is a lifelong commitment to a particular type of work. For example, a young person who likes working on cars can make it into a career. He or she can start off as an oil change technician at a Jiffy-Lube, move up to a junior mechanic at a car dealership, later become a master mechanic, and possibly end up managing the dealership service department.

A person who enjoys working in schools might start off as a teacher’s assistant, continue their college education to become a teacher, then pursue additional degrees and become a mentor teacher or an administrator at a school or school district.

A person who enjoys helping others in the medical field may begin their career as an orderly, moving patients from a room in a hospital to the imaging department for an x-ray or MRI, a lab, or physical therapy as their responsibility. Later on, this medical helper could become a nurse, then with additional schooling, become a registered nurse. With additional education and training, the next step might be physician’s assistant, then doctor, even a specialist in a particular medical field like OB/GYN, Orthopedist, or Cardiologist. Beyond that, medical doctor’s can also serve as administrators of large hospitals or healthcare systems like Kaiser or Blue Cross.

People who grow in their field through promotions, enjoy greater pay and more benefits. They usually get more time off from work, and for many of them, earn the opportunity to continue learning and growing, and becoming more skilled in their career. Some companies and organizations even pay workers for the training that makes them better at their work.

Many people are self-motivated to learn more and more. If you are one of those people, always keep your eyes and ears open, keep thinking of new and better ways to do things, and always ask people who know more than you to tell you about what they do and how they do it. Doing this can help you do it someday yourself.

(C) 2021 Henry Anker