Reply #77: But the thing is, a lot of those jobs DONT pay significantly more with experience

[conflictgirl]

Seriously, look at the job market. Data entry clerks with 10 years of experience don't make twice as much as data entry clerks who are new on the job. Retail workers don't make significantly more with experience - even if you get promoted from regular sales associate to store manager, you're still not going to make a huge amount of money. I could go on with examples, but the truth of the matter is that in terms of sheer numbers of jobs available, the ones that have huge opportunities for advancement and wage increases are in the minority. Even as I'm discovering now, you can have a college degree and years of recent experience and there are still way more qualified people out there than good jobs for them. I've been a freelance writer and editor for the past 5 years while I was in school and am qualified for a staff writing and editing job; the last such job I applied for, there were more than 300 applicants from all over the country. 300 applicants for ONE job in a professional field. That could be used to argue the point that if you have one of those good jobs, giving it up may be foolish. But if you didn't have a good job like that in the first place, it's ridiculous to think that a data entry job (which was what I was doing before having kids) would have become a high-paying management job.

The idea that if you work hard, you'll make a good salary that increases substantially every year is quickly becoming a paradigm of the past.