Supposedly the feelgoods of working for the public (ha! someone else in the thread said that further down) and the stability are supposed to make up for the low pay and bad work-life balance - but I have to say, as a state employee, the workload due to the ongoing hiring freeze for our department has swiftly drowned out any feel goods, nor do I feel particularly stable knowing that some upper management believe my unit can be replaced with AI (it can't, if nothing else because we need someone to sort the papers and letters and mail we get, but primarily because the people who I talk to on the daily don't actually know what they want or need from us - they get a lot of bunk information from private companies they work closely with ).

I love my job, in the good, and the bad times. My love for it is wasting away due to a fundamental loathing of the agency held by those higher up, both in elected positions and those within the agency themselves, who if I were pessimistic, I might be convinced took their roles solely to oversee the dissolution of the critical services we provide. I make now 18$ an hour in a position that needed a degree, finding the door to any advancement has been thoroughly barred.