Some professions always struggle to get staff, whether it’s the nature of the work, the long hours, or the travel element required for the role. Despite having a great salary, there are some jobs that employers simply can’t pay people to do. Here is a list of 18 jobs that pay well but no one wants.
Home-Health Nurse
Caring for a patient in their own home is a highly skilled and valuable job, and home-care nurses must have the necessary medical qualifications to be able to support people suffering from long-term health conditions, so the salary for this job is high. However, medical facilities struggle to recruit candidates for these roles, mainly because this is a position that lots of young people avoid as they tend to view it as a boring, limited career choice.
Coal Miner
Paying upwards of $50,000 per year, coal mining is a lucrative career option, But it’s also a dirty and dangerous one. Despite a great salary, mining companies struggle to attract workers purely because of the physically demanding, high-risk nature of this profession. It’s not surprising, really, as opting to spend your entire career underground isn’t all that attractive to us either.
Portable Toliet Cleaner
Gross, we know, but someone's got to clean porta-pots! Maybe it just won’t be us. At $30,000+ per annum, this is quite a well-paid job. But, for obvious reasons, the unpleasant nature of the work deters people from applying.
Pest Control
Eww. Yes, that might be your initial thoughts, and it’s the same for a lot of other people, too. That’s why pest control companies struggle to get staff. Unless you have a penchant for catching rodents and other insects, we understand if you pass on this job, even if it does pay $40,000 per year.
Sewage Inspector
Even though this position comes with an annual salary of $66,000, this is another job that employers literally can’t pay people to do. A sewage inspector has to deal with some pretty awful tasks, and dealing with the bad smell of raw sewage is all part of the job, so we can forgive you if you don’t feel like holding your nose for your entire career.
Landfill Operator
Paying a generous salary of $67,000 per year, we can’t quite understand why most people think this is a rubbish job. Apologies, I couldn’t help myself. I’ll bin that joke. Oh dear. But seriously, of course, we get the fact that even though the money is great, most people don’t want to spend 40 hours a week in a trash dump.
Embalmer
Considering that this job requires working with dead bodies on a daily basis, and even worse, preserving them with embalming fluid, we’re not sure that $78,000 would be enough for us to consider this career choice either.
Slaughterhouse Worker
Ok, so this one is pretty self-explanatory, and as the name suggests, this job involves killing animals for the consumer food industry. Now, of course, there are approved processes, etc, which have been deemed “acceptable,” ethical, and humane. But, not everyone agrees with these “processes,” furthermore, not many people want to spend their days ending the lives of another living thing, so, for many reasons, abattoirs notoriously struggle to get staff, regardless of what salary they offer.
Oil Rig Worker
Working on an oil rig involves being at sea for weeks or even months at a time; this is a physically demanding and dangerous job that requires employees to be away from their friends and families for extended periods. Therefore, despite offering a high salary of $85,000+, people aren’t queuing up to do this job.
Crime Scene Cleaner
Despite offering a healthy salary upwards of $72,000, as you can imagine, a crime scene cleaner literally means the person has to attend all sorts of awful crimes and clean up the aftermath. Therefore, we can understand why no one wants to do this job, no matter what it pays.
Garbage Bin Collector
Humans create a lot of waste, and without waste disposal staff, our homes and cities would become pretty polluted and rancid places to live. As valuable of a job as a garbage collector is, it’s also an extremely dirty one that exposes its employees to bio-hazards and the risk of infection and disease. That’s why, even though it pays $60,000 per year, not many people apply for this job.
Animal Control Worker
People in America love pets, and we have a lot of them; however, not everyone is able to take care of their pets as well as others, and this can result in them being abandoned or becoming strays. As an animal control worker, you could receive a salary of $36,000+ per year, but you will also have to catch and handle stray and often dangerous animals that have escaped. This is a challenging and dangerous job that struggles to attract candidate applications, but we see why.
Roofer
Every house and building structure in America requires a roofer to install a safe, weather-resistant roof, so this is an essential job. However, if you want to be a roofer, you better have a head for heights as you will literally be on top of buildings all day. Due to its risky and dangerous nature, even a salary of $45,000+ per year isn’t enough to convince most people to consider this career.
Medical Tester
Every drug that you’ve ever taken, whether it’s an aspirin or a hayfever pill, once had to be tested on humans to decipher if it was safe or if it had any side effects. Considering that medical testers usually have to sign massive legal waiver forms agreeing to accept all manner of potential side effects, which could even be serious, including death, many people feel that you simply couldn’t pay them enough to do this job, and $40,000 certainly is not enough.
Fish Processor
You may have noticed that fish has a smell, a pretty strong, repugnant odor that lingers for hours, if not days. Therefore, can you imagine working as a fish processor who has to stand and sort, descale, and remove fish guts for hours every day? No, we can’t either. Not even for $30,000 a year. Eww, no thanks.
Asbestos Remover
Asbestos is a highly hazardous substance contained within older building developments that can have serious consequences for human health. That’s why an asbestos removal worker can expect to be paid upwards of $55,000 per year. However, for many people, this hazardous job is not worth it.
Poultry Farm Worker
Handling raw chicken every day isn’t most people's idea of an innovative, exciting career. However, poultry farm workers can expect to receive upwards of $32,000 per annum, which isn’t bad, but it’s still not good enough remuneration for having to look at chicken feet for eight hours a day.
Truck Driver
While some people might think that the idea of getting to drive a monster truck from state to state sounds exciting, others know that the reality means long hours and a lot of time away from your loved ones. Haulage companies work hard to incentify this job role as it is such an essential part of getting goods to the consumer market, but even with a great salary of circa $70,000 per year, not many people find this job attractive.
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