If you’re a lumberjack, it’s not OK

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/05/2017 (3058 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I imagine the bespectacled scientists at Statistics Canada are feeling pretty smug about themselves right now.

This is not because they have just performed some groundbreaking new statistical analysis on canola crop yields — although they probably have — but because they are now the coolest cats on the employment block, so to speak.

I am referring to the fact that the hip research analysts at CareerCast.com — a job-search and career-guidance website that since 1988 has evaluated 200 professions to determine the best and worst jobs available — have officially declared “statistician” as the top job for 2017.

CareerCast.com ranks these professions from best to worst on four “core criteria” — work environment, income, stress and hiring outlook — and this year they have decided that statisticians are No. 1, despite the fact that, no matter how you look at them, they continue to be statisticians.

We know what you are thinking. You are thinking: “Um, what exactly is a statistician? Doesn’t it have something to do with numbers?”

Well, you are pretty much spot on. The official definition of statistician states: “A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics.” Wow! Is that a helpful definition, or what? No, it isn’t. It’s kind of like saying: “A technician is someone who works with technology.”

Now that statistician is officially the best job on the planet, we should take a moment here to think about all the wonderful work statisticians perform, as compared with other cool jobs involving numbers. Here’s a helpful guide:

1) Accountant: This is a person whose job entails telling you how much money you have been able to hide from the government;

2) Statistician: This is a person whose job involves telling you what percentage of the population has been able to hide more money from the government than you did;

3) Actuary: This is a person whose job requires them to use statistics to calculate how old you will be when you are stabbed to death in prison by an inmate who was not able to hide as much money from the government as you were.

Before we go any further, here’s a quote from the folks at CareerCast explaining why statisticians are No. 1: “As the world becomes more quantitative and data-focused, mathematics takes centre-stage, with statistician topping the best jobs of 2017…

“One key factor in the profession’s top billing is that employment is expected to jump by 34 per cent in the coming seven years. The extraordinarily high hiring outlook is the result of increased demand in fields that might not otherwise seem like areas for statisticians.

“A statistician’s skill set can be used to break down and analyze large quantities of data. The demand for these skills spans a variety of industries, including marketing, banking, government, sports, retail and even health care.”

Thank you, CareerCast.com. When we were growing up, kids used to dream about playing in the National Hockey League and hoisting the Stanley Cup, or becoming astronauts and flying to the moon. Now it seems we live in a geek-intensive world wherein youngsters are going to adorn their walls with posters of laptop-toting scientists with lab coats and pocket protectors.

Now, statistical wizards can bask in the glow of knowing their social lives will be at least 72.8 per cent more exciting, as we see from this fictional conversation between persons of the extreme opposite gender at a local watering hole:

Single guy: “So, what’s your sign?”

Single woman: “What are you, buddy, a fighter pilot or something?”

Single guy: “Heck no, I’m a statistician!”

Single woman: “Let’s go back to your place right now, Dreamboat! I am 100 per cent aroused!”

While statisticians are the new Kings of the World, the real tragedy is that ink-stained journalistic wretches such as myself have once again been declared to have the least desirable jobs in the world.

According to CareerCast.com, reporter is the worst job imaginable, trailing the pack at No. 200. Here’s what they said about my profession: “The value of trained, professional newspaper reporters and broadcasters has taken on heightened importance recently as well as increased scrutiny. Journalists covering politics in particular, have been under extreme pressure as they strive to credibly cover the news and keep our nation informed.”

Even logger (No. 198) was rated as being a better job than writing for a newspaper, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, because the worst thing that can happen to me in the workplace is that I will sustain a nasty paper cut, whereas a logger risks losing a medically important limb to a chainsaw or being turned into a tiny plaid-coloured stain by a pine tree the size of the Richardson Building.

We even rate behind exterminators (No. 196) who actually have to touch vermin, as opposed to just reporting on their antics in the Senate. (If you are a senator and considering a lawsuit, that was a joke.)

But, hey, I’m not the one who crunched the numbers for CareerCast.com. I can’t imagine who they would have hired to do that, but I’ll bet it wasn’t those angry-looking lumberjacks in the corner.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca