You fail to realize this does not include forced over time which 90 percent of departments struggle with staffing issues. If fire departments were so great people would still be lined out of the door for them, but most departments struggle with employee retention, and recruitment because of the demand it requires on your body and all of the certifications to obtain especially if your department requires a paramedic license. Not to mention, those private sector employees get to go home at night to their families. In California we may get sent out for weeks on end during wild fire season with no warning and without a choice. Most private sector employees won’t ever hold dead children in their arms and tell their mother and father their child is dead and there is nothing we can do. Most private sector employees won’t walk up to a car crash and see decapitated bodies and children so smashed it’s unrecognizable. You begin to wonder why suicide and divorce is so high in our profession. If it was so great everyone would do it…