Making a living in one of the worst paid job markets in Canada

A little rant, for the record.

This morning I was approached, through a tip from a well meaning colleague, by a technical recruiter from Calgary who was looking for a technical writer in Victoria. But it was a junior position, and she offered me $20 an hour! That, I told her, is what my cleaner charges. This is the second recruiter in a six month period who’s offered me $20 an hour for tech writing; the last one was in Vancouver, for heaven’s sake. I think there is more pure dignity in working as a cleaner for that kind of money than as a technical writer, so I turned it down — in the interests of not driving the salary standards for professional writers any further towards the basement than they already are.

Who is accepting such wages, and can you please stop?

I think this also demonstrates the perils of agency employment vs contracting for a living; through the sweat of our brows we are offered the opportunity to subsidize the decent wages the recruiters are making. They do not seem to understand that there is a difference between a permanent salaried job with benefits that can be quoted as a theoretical hourly wage, and a contract position that requires us to patch a living together from a month here and a month there, and pay our own health care, training, holidays and overhead. Grrr.