For teachers and librarians
Who Earns What is an encyclopedia of pay that kids and students can explore using official statistics. It covers 830 jobs in the United States and 144 in Japan, 120 well-known people, and 150 questions kids often ask. It is published by Offeredly LLC.
Safe to use in class
- No ads and no sign-up. There is nowhere for a student to enter personal information.
- No cookies, and nothing that identifies a visitor is stored.
- All we count is page views and which list tiles get clicked. We record the page path, the language, the screen width (rounded to 100px) and the path that was clicked. We do not store IP addresses, browser details or cookies. If your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, even this count is not sent. Page-level traffic is also counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which does not use cookies.
- Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts.
Four ways to use it in class
- Compare the same job in the US and Japan (grades 5-8). Open registered nurses in the US and nurses in Japan side by side. Students notice that exchange rates move the numbers, and that the US figure is a median while Japan publishes an average. Browse more jobs by field.
- "How many times the typical person?" (grades 6-8). Each page on well-known people says how many times a typical worker's pay it is. Discuss what counts as a lot, and where the number comes from (law, disclosure or estimate).
- Find a field from the rankings (grades 3 and up). Read the highest-paying jobs ranking, pick one job, guess why it pays more or less, then look it up. A good way into a research project.
- The "Who earns more?" quiz (all grades, 5 minutes). Use the quiz as a warm-up. Students guess which of two jobs pays more before seeing the answer.
For a 30-minute research lesson: quiz (5 minutes), pick one job and look it up (15), fill in the worksheet and share (10).
How to cite
Copy this line into a report or display. When citing a single page, replace the URL with that page's address.
Who Earns What (Offeredly LLC). Data: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan), Basic Survey on Wage Structure; US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). https://whoearnswhat.com/ (accessed: month day, year)
The dataset is downloadable as JSON on the download page (CC BY 4.0). See how the numbers are made.
Printable worksheet
Print the box below on A4.
Investigate: jobs and pay
Name __________________ Date __________
| 1. Job | |
|---|---|
| 2. Pay in the US | |
| 3. Pay in Japan | |
| 4. How many times the typical person | |
| 5. What I found out |
Source: Who Earns What https://whoearnswhat.com/ (US BLS OEWS; Japan MHLW Basic Survey on Wage Structure)
Contact
Questions about using the site in class, or a correction: hello@whoearnswhat.com.