The Lumberjack and the Mathematician

FX: Axe hitting wood.

I got an axe for my birthday when I was 14.

Mary Hurley (phone): You were very (laughs) you were very interested in taking trees down.

That’s my mom, Mary Hurley.

For whatever reason, I had this Paul Bunyan kind of lumberjack dream.

Mary: To live outside. To wear a plaid shirt. They live in a log cabin on the top of the hill. And they yell out timber. It seemed like a really cool thing to you I think.

At about the same time I got my first axe, I was failing math.

I still get my deposit slips turned back to me with corrected errors I have to approve with my initials.

But for the last five months those deposit slip slip-ups have been less frequent, because - like a growing number of people - I’ve been out of work.

I’ve been reading job boards, sending out resumes.

Lingering over peculiar ads for technical training. Maybe I should be a phlebotomist?

But it was Jobrated.com’s report on the best and worst jobs in the United States that really fired up a career conundrum:

Tony Lee: The best job in the United States is mathematician.

That’s Tony Lee, publisher of JobsRated.com.

He’s been overseeing this Best & Worst list for the last 12 years.

Sean: Ok, so what is the worst job?

Tony Lee: According to our study the absolute worst job in the United States is lumberjack.

So the best job in the United States is the thing I’m least able to do - while the worst job in the United States is something I’m still kind of fantasizing about.

FX: Axe chopping wood. Tree falling.

Sean: Now was this just a statistical model of best and worst, or was there a survey of mathematicians and lumberjacks?

Tony: For the most part it’s based on a statistical study with weighting on different aspects.

Aha! So a statistical, math-based study – put together by mathematicians – using mathematical methods has found that the best job in the United States is (FX: Axe chops) axe-chop drum roll please!...Mathematician!

Ok - so that’s not really true.
Let’s just soberly acknowledge that this is a fair and comprehensive study handled by research professionals, none of whom are lumberjacks.

So I thought – why not talk to a real mathematician and a real lumberjack?

Peter: First of all, it’s probably obvious, but it should be said that you can’t really put all the jobs in the world in a linear order. It’s like saying “this is the best vegetable and this is the worst vegetable”. It depends on what you like.

That’s Dr. Peter Winkler, a professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College.

Sean: Have you ever had a bad job as a mathematician?

Peter: (long pause) Sighs. I really can’t say that I have. I mean, I’m a lucky guy. I admit it.

Lucky guy - or is this just the giddy symptom of having the best job in the country?

Along with very good pay, most mathematicians enjoy low stress, secure futures, a lack of deadlines, and the camaraderie of their fellow mathematicians – all of whom are also well paid, unstressed, securely futured, and without a deadline in sight.

There’s also this pretty cool perk:

Peter: The dress expectations and the social behavior expectations for a mathematician are not high. You can dress poorly and be awkward and you only look like a normal mathematician (laughs).

But what do mathematicians do exactly?

Peter: A lot of what a mathematician does is not readily explicable - a little bit like working for a secret agency in the government.

FX: Chain saw. Logging area.

Jaimie Carpenter from Holderness worked as a lumberjack for over 28 years.

He’s still in the business, working for Top Notch Tree Experts, logging residential sites.

When I told him the results of the study he laughed and said something I’ve heard from other loggers:

Jamie Carpenter: Everybody that does it, loves it. I loved it. I always felt I was contributing. Yannow? To the economy. I mean, everybody uses toilet paper. Everybody uses paper.

Here’s Tony Lee again, the guy from jobsrate.com.

Tony: I mean lumberjack really kind of strikes out on every level. You know the physical demands are tremendous. We heard from lumberjacks who were defending the profession coming back and saying I’ve only broken my leg twice and my collar bone once and it’s really not that bad.

Jamie: I know a friend of mine who got killed and he was just sawing up at a landing. And he’d done this his whole life and he knew what he was doing. He was going through a divorce at the time, didn’t have his mind on what he was doing and a log rolled down and crushed him. You hear stories like that all the time.

Deadliness is one of the uncompromising elements that really sinks lumberjack to the bottom.

Combine that with low pay and a grim hiring outlook and you’ve got yourself the worst job in the United States.

Jamie: The last year I was in business I handled almost a half a million dollars and I made 12 or 14 thousand dollars. …… I work 60 hours a week and I’m making about a dollar and fifty cents an hour (laughs).” But I still loved doing what I was doing.

When it comes down to it, isn’t that really the point?

Of course, it helps if you’re making a little more than a dollar fifty an hour and you have a good chance of living through the lunch.

Sean: And I don’t know if radio reporters have any ranking in this best or worst?
Tony: Yeah, they’re in there. Somewhere in the middle.

Music: Danny Kaye’s Inchworm

Somewhere in the middle, between the lumberjack and the mathematician. Feels about right.

For NHPR news, I’m Sean Hurley.