Let’s put this into some real numbers. The Filipino government (BIR Statistics) says the average household is made up of 2 working adults, 1 non-working adult, 4 school age children and 1 younger child. They further say the average household makes P22,400 per month or roughly $420.
I have a couple of friends who have recently got J1 teacher visas in the US. The first is a Teacher 1 with 10 years on the job at a salary grade 11, which is P20,500 or $410 a month, and she was supporting 2 non-working adults, 1 her husband a heavy drinker and her elderly grandmother, plus 4 kids. Her bring home in Indiana after all fees and taxes are paid is a bit over $34,000 a year, or $2850 a month. She rents a townhouse with 2 other young teachers and has never had so much extra space in her life and her rent and utilities including, phone, internet and cable run her $675 a month this includes chipping in for gas in her roommates car since they all work at the same school. This means she sends $1000, or P50,000 home to her family every month all of it paid to her grandmother and not her drunk husband. She does allocate 100 peso ($2 for a fifth of rum) a day so he will go drink elsewhere with his friends and stay out of her grandmother’s way and not be drunk around the kids. She spends roughly $300 a month on food, while saving $850 a month for the 36 months she will be gone and she is hoping that she can extend it to 5 years. She will come home with somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 in savings. With $25,000 near where she already lives that would allow her to buy a huge bit of land and house. Call it a an acre plus and 3 to 5 bedrooms.
My second friend got her secondary teaching degree in special education and and a job right away, while living at home she went and finished her master’s in Educational Management and was working as a teacher III here making making P25,000. She is a newly minted 26 year old and after taxes and fees is making a bring home of $54,000 per year or $4500 after 1 year in the states. Her only family obligation is to pay for her sister’s college, which runs her about $200 a month. She has already saved $20,000, or half the price of a an older, but still nice 4 bedroom house in her parent’s Davao neighborhood. She intends to put in at least 6 rooms for rent on an upper floor, since it is walking from 2 major colleges and will cost about $50,000 in total by the time she comes back to finish her doctorate in 3 to 5 years. In that time period she will have saved enough to buy an income producing property and have at minimum enough to finish her doctorate. She then intends to do another 3-5 years in the US.
Now lets flip this around to 2 nurses I know. The first is 2 years post graduation with a year worked here and one more in the US. She will be 26 in January. Here in the Philippines her pay rate was P9800 per month or roughly $180 US for six 12 hour days a week. She is living in San Diego now working two 12 hour shift jobs for a total of 72 hours a week at a rate $40 hour for the night shift on her low paying job. That is just as many hours as she would be working in the Philippines. Her gross income for the 9 months she was working in the US last year and part of that was with only 1 job was $97,000 with a savings of $35,000. She tells me she will gross over $150,000 with another $50,000 saved.
My next nursing friend is older. She has been working in the US for 2 year stints then 1 years here while she worked on her advanced degrees and took care of her kids and set up a retirement place. She is married to another Filipino nurse who has also gotten his doctorate here. Now in their mid 30’s They have applied for US permanent residency. He is going to be teaching nursing at a local college with occasional shifts at the college hospital to stay in practice. She is head of nursing education at the hospital she works for. Their combined income is $205k, most of it hers. She told me that over the last year her residual income from Filipino businesses, which include a timber farm, fruit plantation, and five 7–11 stores which mostly employ their family members so they don’t have to directly send cash is another $150,000. She has come a long way for a girl who after high school worked 16 hours a day 7 days a week in her family sari-sari store out in the provinces.
Last but not least. My wife’s cousin who is a very cute 22 year old who barely graduated high school, but did manage to get a job waiting tables, and then moved up to a cruise ship waitress 6 months ago. Her monthly income at a resort was P11,000 which is more than my young nurse friend was making. Her job is pretty demanding lots of hours but the pay and food are good. She is netting about $2500 a month or P125,000, sending $1000 home to her parents and siblings, saving $750 so she can go to college worry free in a few years or buy a house, and has a good time on port calls with the rest.
/* 2 Additional friend who just made their way to the US as nurses */
One works in Seattle with her Master’s in Midwifery with a base pay of $130,000 USD. She had previously worked in the US as a labor and delivery nurse as well as in the emergency room. She came back after 7 years in the US to care for her elderly grandmother, got her masters here in a 2 year program and worked in Cebu for 2 years as a midwife while she planned her return to the US. She qualified as a Midwife after having returned as a labor and delivery nurse making $75,000. Her husband is physicians assistant in the US, which didn’t guarantee her a visa, but did make it easier. Her pay as a public health midwife in Cebu was P15,000 per month with six 12 hour days a week.
The second works in a Kansas City Doctor’s office for $18.00 per hour. This is actually low pay for an RN, but she works reasonable hours between 7:30–4:30 Monday through Friday with an hour off for lunch. His office is very near the college she plans on getting her master’s in Physical Therapy in with hopes of immigrating to the US after a few years easily making twice what she makes now. She is 23, and her pay in the Philippines was all of P8400 and it was mostly to be pretty at Dermatology Clinic in Manila run by her Uncle.
/* Was just contacted through Quora by a network engineer who was the senior network administrator for a major university in Manila*/
The lady was from a poor provincial family who managed to put her through university and graduated with a degree in Computer Science at age 22. She was qualified both a Cisco and Microsoft Networking, MCDBA, had A+ certification as well as several other Microsoft products by age 23. She went through a few tech companies received her masters by age 24 and PhD by 27 and was hired by her university as their IT Administrator and a professor of CS. While it didn’t pay as well other IT jobs might have for her skill set and education P360000 per year or P30,000 a month it was a prestigious job. At the age of 35 She was forced to take on 2 new CS grads as assistants, both from prominent families. A year later when she gave them adequate reviews she was told, “Good, one of them would replace her, and she had a year to decide which one.”
She immediately began looking for a job elsewhere. Every place she applied said she was too old at 35 and that all her education, professional certifications, and 15 years of experience meant nothing. Two catholic universities told her they doubted her moral fitness to even teach CS since at her age with no children or husband it meant she was either 1) a likely lesbian or 2) she was an immoral whore using birth control and/or abortions in order to keep from having children. Another university told her if she could prove she was a fertile virgin he had a Chinese neighbor who had a son that needed a wife and they would pay her family $5000 US. The man that told her that was a priest.
She managed to get a visa to work in the US in San Jose for a small firm earning $9600 USD a month as A senior network administrator with the possibility of further promotion as there were three levels of people above her and she was qualified for any of those roles. Where as she pad a prestigious job here where age discrimination happens in your 30’s and you are replaced only by adequate but well connected 23 year olds a mere salary of P360,000 per year she now makes 30% more in a single month in a place where age discrimination is not only illegal, but when it does happen under some other name wouldn’t happen for another 20 years, and she would still be able to find a decent well paying job somewhere else even if for not as much money.
She also told me that there are more than a dozen programmers at her firm who even with master’s degrees from good universities in the Philippines came from poor provincial families so were denied decent jobs in the Philippines. They all are started out making between $55,000 and $75,000 USD per year or P2.75 Million and P3.75 Million, with the average cost of 4–8 bedroom house on half a hectare or more where they grew up costing between P1.5 Million and P4 Million. She has told me that each of them own at least one such property outright and all of them are under 33.
/*Heard from a live in housekeeper-nanny in Toronto*/
22 year old high school graduate from a STEM HS Program in Agusan Del Sur, but no prospect of college as the youngest of her mother’s 9 with 13 more younger children ages 2 to 14 of her 3 titas (living with them) and 4 from her tito, who hasn’t been seen for 8 years, ages 9 -16. She was responsible for running the sari-sari store 15 hours a day and helping to sort goods for the family ukay-ukay stall run on the weekend as well as preparing food sold at the market stall and when she wasn’t busy doing that helping with laundry and housekeeping. If she was lucky she earned for herself 50 peso a day, and had to keep it hidden from her family or they would come up with a reason for her to spend it in support of the family.
After 4 years of saving she managed to get a live in nanny job in Toronto, Canada. Her cash payment is low by local standards $200 Cad per week or P7800, $165 USD. The three children are 9 year old triplet girls and a 14 year old boy. Her only official interaction with the son is to make sure he gets up on time and that there is enough breakfast for him when she makes it for the other 3 and herself. She however works only 6 hours a day in roughly two 3 hour shifts a morning shift to get the kids up and off to school then pick up then again picking them up at the school and buying fresh snacks for the kids & any groceries for the evening meal, which she sometimes assists in making. The parents are foodies and enjoy learning Filipino food and teaching her other cuisines. The parents are a lawyer and college professor.
Non-monetary compensation at the employers expense:
- She has a private room with 6 year old desktop computer with bluray and dual monitors and high speed internet. her cell phone is paid for. She takes 3 college classes 2 online M,W & F and one in person on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. In the afternoon she takes online French lessons. They have promised her car driving lessons come spring and good weather to qualify for a Canadian car license even though she has a Filipino motorcycle license.
- She has access to all household facilities from the kitchen and laundry facility, the family room & home theater including streaming services, and the kids playroom with some gaming systems. She uses the gym & pool at the college and the family hot tub regularly. She also has at her disposal access to the family uBer account within reason.
- On Friday nights she goes to the mall and movies with the family as well as a nice out to eat dinner. She has only been asked to watch a movie with the girls so the parents could watch something else twice and they paid her extra and extra $20 so they didn’t have to sit through the bad kid’s movie. They usually pay for whatever movie she wants to see as well as refreshments which is often an action flick with the son with who she also plays video games, MTG, D&D and Pokemon. He helps her with her French and she teaches him Bisaya enough to talk to her cousins about his age with who he buys load for so they can talk to him. he is quite smitten with 5 girls between 12 and 15.
- Weekends are her official free days She often assists mom with shopping for the week, goes to yoga, and gets more out to eat meals, usually and often new clothes or shoes because mom feels guilty buying bags of clothes for her daughters but not their nanny. She attends mass with the family on Sunday and at least one more out to eat meal afterwards. She can go out socially, but was required to not get married or pregnant during her 4 year contract and opted to get an implant rather should she decide to any of the nice young associates at the law firm or church the family have chosen to introduce her were tempting.
/*heard from another couple of maids and no I am not providing anyone their contact details so don’t ask*/
Both ladies were forced to drop out of school. One got pregnant at 12 after her friend’s 42 year old father got them drunk and raped her. She was expelled, even after she miscarried, from a beating by the same man and was not allowed to go back. The other dropped out at 14 when her parents decided one bad grade meant she had no future and invested all their money in her brother who got their 12 year old neighbor pregnant his senior year and then ran off never to be heard from again.
The one who got pregnant was eventually kicked out of the house since her father didn’t want to support her. Rather than turn prostitute at 13, she illegally went to work as a maid/nanny in Jakarta. An agency helped her get the paperwork she needed, by becoming the managers girlfriend for a while. She now eats what the family does, has a room to herself (as one of 13 kids this is a luxury) and makes P13,000 per month after the agency gets its cut. The family she works for is strict, and she doesn’t have a lot of free time, but she is fed, clothed, housed and not abused, something her 4 older brothers at home and uncle started doing after she got pregnant. She is now 18 and doesn’t feel anyone is owed anything. She hopes to find an American or European man to marry once she is of legal age to do so.
Maid #2 went to went to work for a few abusive families in the Philippines, both physically and sexually. When she was 19 she got a job working as a maid in Singapore for P25,000. She is fed, has a provided uniform and gets a one month unpaid vacation every year when her family goes to Europe. She helped support her grandmother at first, but after she died and the family tried to get her to pay for all funeral arrangements including a P50000 feast afterwards she told them to go to hell and hasn’t been to see them nor given a single peso since paying the funeral home and cemetery. At 26 she knows she is too old find a decent job in the Philippines even if she goes back now and went to college. She too told me she is looking for an American husband in hopes of one day having a family and a husband with enough income to support her and the children.
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