You can tell this is a poll of what people perceive to be the important jobs because doctor is #1. The most important jobs by sector in order of importance for developed nations is
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power supply- we all need electricity and few of us have the ability to generate it ourselves
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water supply- getting enough clean water for your day to cook and wash is a near full time job. For Americans a gallon of water is roughly 8lbs and your average toilet uses 3-5 gallons per flush. It would take much of the day to get and purify the water you use
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sanitation workers- this the poll got right. The folks collecting waste do more directly for public health than most doctors could hope to do.
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I used to think this was true while working for a B2B company as a graphic designer. Everything just seemed pointless like I wasn't contributing anything meaningful to the world. But I do think that art in its many forms contributes meaningfully to culture in general and can also be quite powerful when used well. History of graphic design shows just how influential designs were in Nazi Germany and how similar techniques are still used today. Then there is the matter of UI design and how it's increasingly become essential today. While most applications it's fine to have a frustrating piece of garbage, UI is rather important for things like medical systems, car displays, and other areas where getting it wrong could mean life or death. Unfortunately my job is still pretty useless to society regardless of these points made. I'll go back to my corner now.
A quick image search returned this
https://mothership.sg/2020/06/milieu-survey-sunday-times-essential/
So many commenters are missing crucial context to this infographic.
This was released during peak covid and I mean PEAK as in June 2020, global lockdowns, high mortality rates, shortages of essentials. In case anyone has a short memory, the world as we knew it practically ground to a halt.
Not to take away anything from artists but essential in this context meant essential to the basic human needs. Health, Nutrition, Sanitation.
They were probably asked an open ended question. Artist is likely the most common answer given due to the simple fact that more people can think of that job compared to PR manager when asked
Artist? I think the job was passed off to the first person passing the bosses desk.
Add health insurance CEO to the top of the non-essential jobs list.
Good thing we’re getting rid of those immigrants. That should free up loads of artist, telemarketer, social media manager, and PR specialist jobs.
Hey, cleaners are second most important, they must be paid super well, right?
... Right?
Plot twist: Graph was mad with AI
Project Manager was #1 but they told the artist it didn't fit the scope.
I have read that Canadian Geographic magazine ( like National Geographic magazine, but colder ) decided to fire their photo-editor.
It's a photo-centric magazine.
So, their quality dropped.
& that had consequences..
Since I only read 1 source for the story, I've no idea if it tests-out, but that is exactly the problem with hard-to-grow expertise: you don't know how much worth it is, until you lose it, & then you can't quickly/easily get it back.
( this story is actually a good example of why people should be tested for roles the're not even close to working-in:
it'd help one calibrate the difficulty-in-replacing particular people, AND it'd identify if you even can replace them, & if not, get training backups or get bringing-in people, until you've got a backup, eh? )
Anyways, until a person has worked-through Betty Edwards' "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the 4th Definitive edition", & experienced the hemisphere-dominance-shift, themselves, it simply isn't understandable how meaningful that shift is.
( also, it validates exactly what Hofstadter wrote "Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" about: that each kind-of-knowing is incapable of knowing ANY meaning which isn't within-its-kind-of-knowing. )
_ /\ _
That's about right.
My sister is a graphic designer and makes good money.
