A city job the ticket to Easy $treet
Zoomers are telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s unfair for them to pay back the hefty student loans they took out, that it’s impossible to get a good-paying job, especially in their field, and the future is bleak unless progressive politicians bail them out.
But there is an avenue to the sweet life, one with a generous salary, pension and partial loan forgiveness.
They just have to work for the city of Boston.
As laid out in the Boston Herald, life in the Hub’s public sector is good.
A payroll analysis found that 10,409 employees claimed $100,000 or more in 2023, slightly more than 40% of the entire city payroll.
It’s not a fluke: the percentage of Boston’s city workers pulling down $100,000 or more has jumped by 14% year-over-year. Must be nice.
You can also look forward to a pension down the road — that went the way of spats for private sector workers. There’s also the perk of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. As the city’s website explains, student borrowers who work for the government or at a non-profit, after 10 years of qualifying payments, have the balance of their loans forgiven.
The city also pays for 65% of the monthly MBTA pass of your choice (up to $232). And city employees get free or discounted Bluebike memberships.
The best part? Taxpayers foot the bill for all of this. In the private sector, companies can go bankrupt, 401(k)s can tank, or raises get frozen for years on end.
Not if you work for Boston. You just have to OK with filling your plate from the public buffet.
It may not be quite the VIP ticket as a job in academia — not necessarily as a professor, but as an administrator. They’ve spread like expensive kudzu on college campuses across the country, adding to tuition costs, which are paid for by the loans taken out by students.
Instead of telling students that they have a real future with a Masters in Conceptual Art, teachers should be steering them toward a cushy future ensconced in the Ivies.
The similarity isn’t lost on fiscal experts.
“Mayor Wu’s payroll looks a lot more like the payroll for Harvard than the city,” said Paul Craney, spokesman for MassFiscal. He was alluding to speculation the mayor was heading over to Harvard Kennedy School, which she has repeatedly denied.
Craney said a 14% growth in six-figure pay as Boston faces fiscal pressures is good for the “bureaucrats” but bad for the taxpayers.
“The mayor is clearly patronizing by repaying the bureaucrats,” he added.
The check-writing taxpayers have been through a lot lately.
During the pandemic, companies hemorrhaged money and workers amid lockdowns. Many Massachusetts cities faced massive budget cuts, according to reports.
Not Boston.
The Herald’s database analysis comes at particularly opportune time, as the City Council is eying congestion pricing as a way to raise funds for the MBTA.
We pay for city employee’s lofty salaries, pensions and perks, and now we may have to shell out more money to drive into town.
Boston government — it’s got you coming and going.