IQ and Occupation

140
Top Civil Servants; Professors and Research Scientists.
130
Physicians and Surgeons; Lawyers; Engineers (Civil and Mechanical)
120
School Teachers; Pharmacists; Accountants; Nurses; Stenographers; Managers.
110
Foremen; Clerks; Telephone Operators; Salesmen; Policemen; Electricians.
100+
Machine Operators; Shopkeepers; Butchers; Welders; Sheet Metal Workers.
100-
Warehousemen; Carpenters; Cooks and Bakers; Small Farmers; Truck and Van Drivers.
90
Laborers; Gardeners; Upholsterers; Farmhands; Miners; Factory Packers and Sorters.

The foregoing is a list of likely occupations by IQ. Notably, it covers only the top 75% of the population and excludes the 25% with IQs below 90. Presumably, they would fall into even less skilled occupations.

I am not sure what the implications of this chart are for career choices. Is a high IQ individual going to be happy in a low IQ job? I know that I could never be a salesman, but I am not sure this is because I am too smart for the job. I just don't like rejection. Maybe I'm too smart to be a lawyer, and that's why I hate it. Yeah, that's it. I was meant to be a mad scientist, not an attorney. Damn my guidance counsellor.

A few years ago in Connecticut, a man was turned down for a job as a policeman because he scored too high on an intelligence test. The chief explained to the press that really smart people could never be happy as cops and would not succeed in the job. I wonder how the cops who worked for the chief took the news that they were just smart enough for police work and no smarter. Criminals tend to be even stupider, however. No doubt Dr Moriarty would have a field day.

What happens to society as the lower end of the IQ scale sees its jobs mechanized or exported? They join the underclass. I am talking about some 75 million Americans whose only crime is being born with lower intelligence. I can't imagine how someone with an IQ of 70 or 80 would be able to survive in our highly regulated and controlled economy unless he had a stronger support system than most of the rest of us. It's hard to run a marginal sort of business what with all the licensing and taxes and other obstacles to entry. You have to get a full time job of some kind to get health insurance or any kind of credit to get an apartment, and these are likely to pay very little if they are to be had at all. You can't realistically run a small farm any more as you need too much cash for taxes and other needs, and it is hard to come up with the capital to acquire a piece of land. You can't easily build your own house on the cheap due to building codes and huge costs for materials.

If you are in the lowest 25% on the intelligence scale, you are screwed. Your jobs are mostly gone, and society blames you for your poverty and failure to work the system properly. You must be shiftless and immoral; therefore, you don't deserve much consideration for your plight.

A lot of folks I talk to seem to think that variations in intelligence can be overcome with education. They deny the validity of the concept of general intelligence. I think that this does a disservice to people who are intellectually challenged. It allows us to judge them harshly rather than thinking about how society might be structured to account for their abilities. It is no sin to be less intelligent than someone else any more than it is to be less fleet of foot or naturally musically talented. It is just an accident of birth, and there is not a whole lot anyone can do to make anyone any smarter than when they were born.