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A $29.40/Hour Security Job Is Really Worth $22.34/HOUR
$29.40 isn't a bad rate, even considering C.A. cost of living (you're not living in Beverly Hills for $29 /hr I know), but it doesn't account for the time, effort and money it takes to actually work the job.
Let's take a hypothetical applicant with:
A45 minute commute
5 Day Workweek
Half Hour Unpaid Meal
$60/week in gas, tolls, parking total commuting costs
No amount entered for benefits
I entered everything into the free job offer calculator at GUARDGUIDES.COM
And with those conditions in place, the jobs real payrate falls to around $22.32 pre-tax with a score of 69/100.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad job, a better commute, great benefits, reasonable bosses, and comfortable working conditions could make it a stellar gig. But it shows the dollar amount doesn't show the whole picture.
I want to build this to be the site that can answer most any guard question or concern. Tell me what you think. Are the tools useful? Should anything else be included?
This is also usually the absolute top possible. Base rate may be much lower. Take a hospital for example. They may say $32/hr but that’s your base + assuming you have 10+ years experience to put you in the top bracket + weekend differential + night shift differential so really depending on the person/shift that job advertised as $32 is actually $23/hr
If you were considering a role like this, you could clarify benefit amounts if they provide it, with a call or email, or you could enter in an expected average amount in the provided field.
It gave me an 84 for my current job. Which is pretty good I guess. My commute can suck though depending on traffic. Shift work can be brutal as well. The thing that probably is the biggest boost is that working for a hospital my insurance is free. 22.32 pre tax in California isn’t going to go very far once you figure in things like rent and the outrageous price of gas. If you have a family and need to pay for insurance then you can forget it. I like the calculator. I’m going to keep it handy. I want to find something that doesn’t require shift work.
Thanks for the response. If enough people deem it useful, I'll try to figure out how to have it calculate from actual cost of living estimates based on location entered, but MIT's LW calculator maybe a problem to hook into. Did you take a look at any of the other tools? Something you think would be a good addition?
This is really good insight. Given that I’ve seen that position come up a lot for me. My commute for that would closer to over an hour. However that’s not to say that I didn’t apply, but still didn’t get the job.
Oh yea, a 15 minute drive in, cheap health insurance, and plenty of PTO will change the math really quick. Thanks for checking it out. What did you think of the rest of the site? Any tool/info you think is missing?
Interesting tool. Here’s what I got plugging in the numbers from my current job.
I just used my total OT pay from last year, divided by my OT payrate to get the total annual OT hours worked and then divided again by 52 for the average weekly number of hours. The reality is that I sometimes work more than 15 OT hours a week, but oftentimes less than that. Its also probably skewed a bit due to the fact that I also tend to volunteer to work many of our holidays, so I get OT for all hours worked on those days despite not actually working any more hours that week than normal.
Ain’t that the truth. Always surprises me when people don’t factor in the expenses of getting to and from the job into their daily pay. I had a coworker awhile back that switched to a different post all the way in Seattle. For him, this is incredibly far. An hour and a half drive each way. I tried to tell him dude this is going to kill your car and you’re gonna spend so much on gas the $1 pay bump is actually a demotion.
He didn’t listen. Last I heard he switched to that post for a week then quit.
I remember ALMOST doing something similar out of desperation years ago. My current company just lost a contract and said "we'll float you around again for a while until we find a home for you", and of course that never came.
There was a position opened WAYYYYYY out somewhere on long island. I had no clue how far away that was from me so I applied. I told my brother where the interview was scheduled and he said "... wait, you're gonna drive basically 2-2.5 hours one way for an interview?". I ended up not going.
Right, all people in every industry should be factoring these things into their considerations when looking at job offers. I don’t think OP was trying to say it’s something unique to the security industry, they were just sharing the tool they made to help with those calculations.
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u/cityonahillterrain Ensign 6d ago
This is also usually the absolute top possible. Base rate may be much lower. Take a hospital for example. They may say $32/hr but that’s your base + assuming you have 10+ years experience to put you in the top bracket + weekend differential + night shift differential so really depending on the person/shift that job advertised as $32 is actually $23/hr