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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There are many more nannies than available jobs these days.

And lawyers. And teachers. And just about everything, frankly.

The best of any profession/career/skill set will always have access to jobs, though.

True, but nannies have additional challenges in that nannying is not a job that requires specialized knowledge or skills. Taking care of children is pretty easy. Sure, nannies can educate themselves on child development, but that's not really rocket science. So there is no real way to judge a "best" nanny other than a particular MB's opinion. This is why nannies are paid a market rate and why there are far more nannies than jobs. Nannies are always going to have a problem negotiating better terms based on how much more "skilled" they think they are as long as the skills are common and there is no way to measure degrees of competency.

Yes meeting their basic needs is pretty easy. If that's all you want in a nanny, you could pay the bum on the corner to do it. Stimulating, and educating requires skill, stamina, and a passion that not many possess. The minutiae of caring/playing with children does not excite many people and they would never do a great job at it with the exception of caring for their own child (which even some parents still can't muster). A good nanny is competent enough to meet a child's basic needs and takes seriously the duty of teaching and stimulating him.[/quote]

I completely agree with you. I was responding to the poster who thinks the nanny market is similar to the lawyer market, or the teacher market. It's actually much more difficult because the deliverables, so to speak, are hard to assess, and the real skills do not necessarily come from education and are, on balance fairly easy to develop for anyone who wanted to develop them. Nannies have a harder time than either teachers or lawyers convincing future employers that they are especially skilled and worthy because they have fewer quantitative indicators to show it.

Take 13:05 PP for a minute. She's suggesting there is another market rate, an elite one according to her rate, and that she belongs in this elite rate group because she is a great nanny. Maybe she is and maybe she's right. But the next time she interviews, she needs to convince others of that. She has a rate history, and references, and perhaps some certifications she might leverage with, but lawyers, say (I'm not one, btw) have books of clients and measurable deliverables that prove they are highly skilled and successful. They also have extensive education and a bar exam to attest to their skills. Nannies have none of that.

So they are all on this weird level field, competing with other professionals, but also with people who just think child care would be fun and easy while they think about what else they want to do. This leaves wages dependent on a market that is widely inclusive and more nannies than jobs and no consistent way nannies can show they are high skilled career nannies who should command a high rate, market or otherwise.
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