Fast Food & Fashion: Not As Different As They May Seem

THE GOOD NEWS IS: To get a meaningful job, you don’t have to go to a top-tier or fancy school! (Let alone pay a consultant $700,000 to get you into one.)

Which majors should meaning-seeking students choose? Medical fields, social work, and education, according to PayScale’s data. Counting down the top schools in the job meaning category are: Loma Linda University (91 percent saying that their job makes the world a better place), University of Texas Medical Branch (88 percent), and Thomas Jefferson University (86 percent) — all with a strong prevalence of nursing majors. …

Of the majors that are dead last in terms of job meaning: fashion, art, and business. “Finance majors are in the bottom 20 percent of majors for job meaning,” says Bardaro. The two least meaningful jobs are fast-food cooks and lawyers — the latter being one of the highest-earning professions with low job meaning. And the bottom school for job meaning: Fashion Institute of Technology in New York at 25 percent.

THE BAD NEWS IS: Most of us don’t have “meaningful” jobs, and many of us, especially women, have to rush from one difficult, un-meaningful PT job to another — which can be fatal:

Police found Maria Fernandes dead in her car on Monday night, parked in a convenience-store parking lot in Elizabeth, N.J., according to a police press release. Fernandes, 32, was wearing a Dunkin’ Donuts uniform when she was found. A friend and fellow employees told officials she worked as many as four jobs, said Lt. Daniel Saulnier, a spokesman for the Elizabeth police department. Authorities are waiting on a toxicology report to determine the exact cause of death, but Hazmat investigators found that fumes in Fernandes’ car were caused by a gasoline can that had spilled in the back, according to the release. Friends told police that Fernandes kept gas in her car to avoid running out of gas when traveling between jobs. And she often slept in parking lots to get a few hours of rest between jobs, authorities said.

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