The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Terry Bracy
My favorite fictional detective, Harry Bosch, has a saying that goes like this: everybody counts, or nobody counts.
That thought flashed through my mind walking near my neighborhood on a December day when I eyed five laborers balancing on a steep pitch perhaps 30 feet above ground in the wind and bitter cold re-roofing a fancy suburban home. I remembered as a broke college student a lifetime ago just how miserable roofing is when one sweltering St. Louis summer I worked on a crew that rebuilt flat, asbestos–laden roofs of a public housing project. Most of my fellow laborers were parolees looking for a second chance who couldn’t find jobs that didn’t require operating with picks and shovels and hot tar all day. The men I watched today had the look of Guatemalan immigrants, the second-chancers of this generation.
The scene got me to thinking about how dismissive our society is of people who do the most difficult yet essential work — the people we do not see. They collect our garbage, tend our lawns and parks, fix our streets, stand for hours in assembly lines. Like the probably-immigrant crew of roofers I watched, they embrace the tasks the spoiled among us would never do. Try laying shingles on a 30-foot pitch or bathing in the fumes of boiling tar or dancing with a jackhammer all day. These are the jobs of the unseen.
My New Year’s resolution for 2026 to see these workers and celebrate their contributions to American life.
In addition to those mentioned, here is my partial list of crucial jobs that are both underappreciated and underpaid.
• Teachers. There isn’t a single professional I know who, when asked to explain their success, does not cite the influence of a teacher. Yet few public-school districts in America pay their faculties enough to support a family of four. Too often the guy behind the counter at the local convenience store is a math or science teacher logging hours at a second job.
• Police officers. In a society where there are more guns than people, the lives of police officers are risked with every call, including routine traffic stops. Unlike the military, which is trained to kill, police are asked to save lives through mediation and to employ violence only when absolutely necessary. They are currently operating at a discount.
• Child care. How can a teacher earning, say, $40,000 a year care for his or her young children? The answer: by hiring a daycare worker, someone who is both trustworthy and willing to work for the very low wages the teacher can afford to pay. Many in the daycare workforce are immigrants who in addition to scraping by on subsistence paychecks must keep their heads on a swivel watching for ICE. Every added dollar would stabilize this system.
• Home health aides. Three years ago, I broke my back in a fall and was fitted with a brace and confined to bed for six weeks. I could not have recovered so completely without the efforts of my wife and health aides sent by a service. All were immigrants, and I later learned they were paid $11 an hour. Not only were they kind, but they were also adept at the job of recovery, teaching me how to reinvent my walking stride and balance. How could such beneficial contributions be so poorly compensated?
Inadequate pay for public servants such as teachers results from the huge numbers needed and the tax base supporting them. But many U.S. cities have figured it out. Chicago provides a repeatable example of school districts that teach and pay well.
In the private economy, CEOs are often rewarded for keeping wages of their workers low. It is a perverse method of achieving more output per man hour, otherwise known as productivity. In all but a few major industries, unions are weak or nonexistent, which destroys labor’s bargaining power.
That explains why the CEO of one auto company last year was paid $44 billion while assembly line workers earned as little as $42 thousand.
In the New Year, I am focusing on the worker on the assembly line, the immigrant providing childcare, the roofer pouring boiling tar, and the teacher who works behind the counter at 7-11 at night. They are the people we do not see — people that count.
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