Offshore oil rig. GED or high school required. 47K first year. Persona safety is better than your run of the mill midwestern metal product factory (as opposed to what TLC shows portray). Also, for the white collar track, petroleoum engineering, 125K fifth year. If you can stand 14 on 14 off not a bad deal at all. And they don't take work home either, they can't lol.

My fiancé works 7-5, landscape design, loves the work but doesn't take work home either. So it's not just airline pilots who get the bragging rights of not taking work home with them. If that's the upper hand, then you guys are spiking the kool-aid.

I think most people in this industry have problems reconciling the overwhelming trend that the long-term viability of an airline career is largely out of your hands (i.e. low pay versus other jobs that take you away from home, no lateral career options, inelastic labor force undercuts your income power etc) with the widespread 20th century middle class work ethic mantra of "hard work" and "persistence is valuable in it of itself" that we were all force fed as students in grade school and college. That mantra requires a set of conditions, "assumptions" if you will, to hold true in order for the "persistence" approach to work. Those who insist on pursuing an airline career with that attitude are just hitting a brick wall. Yet when then say "well it was a good run" that's just retionalizing that they were aloof to the idea that work ethic is not a guarantor of success and that there are plenty of jobs out there where you don't have to be philosophically married to the "idea" of your job in order to be successful in it. Heresy on my part!! And that honestly scares people because it strikes a blow to our self-worth when we are quiet busy lemmings and yet don't get the carrot. Look, the industry is screwed for the median, don't keep spinning your wheels calling folks like skyhigh negative, yet privately clicking your heels that the airline fairy comes to the rescue of your career or your W-2 dodges the bullet for longer than 10 years.

If I was a guy whose only access to professional flying was the regionals, man I would go do something else. Honestly. If you're unwilling to relocate to the middle east where people are actually getting paid right (and I wouldn't be willing to, my home is here) I'd just pursue something lucrative and fly on the side. Like I said before, airline pilots are not the only keepers of "not taking your work home with you" so there's jobs out there that allow you to make enough money and allow time to pursue flying recreationally or even do some instructing/niche flying (more fun) on the side. You just gotta de-construct the manufactured reality that your airline dreams will come true as a sole function of time and effort.