I visited a daycare/preschool last month and was introduced to the teacher of the oldest children. She’d retired from the local public school after 35 years of teaching kindergarten and, despite earning a comfortable pension, had chosen to continue teaching 5-year-olds.
A few days later I spent time with two women who’d earned Harvard Law School degrees and jobs at excellent firms. Neither of them had worked at any waged job for 20 years. Another woman at the same event had a Harvard Business School degree. She hadn’t worked for at least 8 years, the age of her single child.
I’m wondering if “career quit rate” would be a useful statistic to compile for young people. If people continue to do a job despite not desperately needing the paycheck, we can infer that it is a satisfying job, right? If people quit despite high potential pay, we can infer that it is not a great career from an emotional point of view.
“Why Women Are Leaving the Workforce in Record Numbers” says that “only 35 percent of women who have earned MBAs after getting a bachelor’s degree from a top school are working full time, compared to 66 percent from second-tier schools.” This is consistent with anecdotes from friends who attended the MIT Sloan School and Harvard Business School. Most of their female classmates have children and no longer work (see Real World Divorce for which states make this a viable long-term personal financial strategy).
Medical doctors may scale back, but not quit entirely (see “Don’t Quit This Day Job” (nytimes) for “nearly 4 in 10 female doctors between the ages of 35 and 44 reporting in 2010 that they worked part time”). Either it is easier to be a part-time MD than it is to be a part-time business manager or being an MD is more satisfying.
I can’t find any good statistics on what percentage of trained and qualified people, organized by field, drop out of the workforce, but I think gathering data would be valuable.
Readers: Know of any good sources for a working/trained ratio by vocation?
Related:
- Book Review: The Redistribution Recession (government paying people to drop out of the workforce)
Some combination of:
* Job flexibility: Some MD specialities are very transactional, so part time practice is very practical. Google “locum tenens.” An ER physician doesn’t carry patients from shift to shift, so working a couple shifts a week would be fine. An independent attorney could *choose* to work from home 20 hours a week writing wills or closing real estate deals or whatever, but that’s not the way biglaw works. And I expect you don’t do that work if you want to show your face at an HLS reunion. The MBA path is typically to work at some big company or other. Those also tend to be relationship-based rather than transaction-based so part time work isn’t an option.
* Sunk costs: it’s irrational, but people probably feel worse about neglecting 7+ years of difficult medical training vs 2 years of not-especially-hard classes to get a MBA.
* Selection bias: presumably women who go to HBS are more likely to encounter (and thus marry) men from an economic stratum that can support their choice to leave the workforce. Women at lower-tier schools are less likely to.
* Selection bias 2: a random person who puts up with 7+ years of med training probably has more constitution to keep working vs someone who didn’t.
I’m sure satisfaction with the job itself plays a role, but there are a bunch of other confounding factors.
For another data point, my mother taught elementary school (mostly deaf education) for 44 years, then retired, and now substitute teaches regularly. I assure you that while the job is not without its frustrations, there was a lot of job satisfaction, at least for her.
That said, I wouldn’t last 20 minutes, so to each their own.
To add to selection bias above…MD’s only start paying back their 200,000 in debt 8-10 years after they start school, so it takes longer to break even. What about rich kids whose family pays for medical school? Rich people know better ways to make money than medical school so they discourage their kids from wasting their time.
Very interesting idea, suddenly amazed that this isn’t already a widely discussed and published metric! Finding it implausible that lady Drs. keep working out of necessity – assortative mating predicts they really shouldn’t need to, so – without any more data! – I really like the “some work is just more satisfying” hypothesis. Perhaps a company like LinkedIn already has just the right data to produce a league table?
I agree with many of the confounding factors indicated above.
Additionally, in the case of teacher there must be a portion of the population that have a tendency towards obligate altruism which could likely manifest itself in a desire to continue to work for the benefit of the next generation.
Phil,
You are an example of the teaching without really needing the money. What motivates you? I find many people with a skill or technical bent do teach their trade or hobby, even if not in a formal classroom or with published writings, and money is not their motive.
Another field where people tend to keep working without needing the money is religion ministers. They are not well paid while working either, so more like a teacher than a lawyer or MBA.
When a promising young woman armed with a HBS or HLS degree marries a higher earning husband, her effective tax rate jumps from 25% to 50%+, roughly speaking. Plus the safety of guaranteed child support payments in event of divorce, one would really have to LOVE their job (more than their children) to leave the house for 12 hours+ a day rain or shine.
A place to start might be the Current Population Survey from The Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have data on occupations by age (https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics.htm#age). Following a cohort through time might give some idea of how many peoples stay in a field. Unfortunately, the occupational classification changed a few years ago, which affects comparability.
You can contact one of their economist for more information.
Sam — when my son was applying to med school, I did a little googling, and learned that about 30% of medical school students have their education paid by their parents, so it’s still a sizeable majority who have to get scholarships, take out 6.31% (currently) federal loans, join military medicine, etc.. My son and his friends in med school have many classmates whose parents are MDs (some may not be paying to put the kid through med school, but many presumably are), so not universal for MDs to discourage their progeny from pursuing med school. But every doctor I know socially makes jokes about “over my dead body is my son/daughter going into medicine,” citing the paperwork, the litigation, the reduced salaries (compared to when they themselves started practicing), the overhead to run one’s own office or even to be part of a group practice, etc..
I live in a neighborhood chock-full of moms who hold a JD from an elite law school, and only about half of them are still working 30+ hours/week at a job similar to their male peers. The MDs are usually working, and managed-care seems to offer them flexible hours/part-time. In fact, one of my friends at my gym is a young pediatrician with 2 young kids. She works 3 shifts per week at a hospital, including about 1-2 night shifts.
My non politically correct father says that part of the reason why economic growth has slowed is that many colleges that train the top engineers, scientists, managers, doctors, lawyers, etc are now training a far larger percentage of women than when he was young.
Women are far more likely than men to “waste” all the elite training by voluntarily quiting the work force.
Men are to a large extent “defined” by their work, so they are far less likely to drop out of the work force, even if they don’t like their jobs.
Women don’t feel as much societal pressure to keep working, and they feel a lot more pressure to stay home with the kids. So they are more likely to just stop working if they don’t like their jobs.
Whenever there is a tough competition, it makes sense to consider a long tail: training or at least accommodating someone like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_E._Allen
I am not totally sure how this could be accomplished, but if it can the benefits will surely outweigh the costs. Is it worth it? Our society is sufficiently rich to take this kind of risks, so it is a no-brainer: one Ms Mirzakhani outweighs tens of thousands of desperate housewives.
It would seem other factors may be in play. Women with high-earning potential degrees may feel freer to stop working while their children are young if they have a spouse whose earning potential is enough to maintain a secure and comfortable life, if they aren’t required to be the major breadwinner. The satisfaction with the professional work is only relative to the satisfaction of being a parent caring for their child (assuming that those duties are not being relegated to others.)
For MDs, depending on the field, time away can be penalized by more than forgone earnings. In some situations, not being engaged in active practice can significantly affect professional access to hospital staff membership and the maintenance of board certification, both of which are prerequisites to being able to practice in the specialty at all. This is particularly true for surgical specialists and intensivists.