I have already mentioned the real estate boom that is grabbing hold of Amman. Cranes make up for the lack of highrises on the horizon, ensuring that Amman one day will have a downtown as memorable as one of its richer counterparts in the Middle East like, say, Kuwait City or Dubai. I pass dozens of constructions every day. I chuckle at the lack of guidelines and try to ignore the ramifications here of the notoriously poor planning around here, i.e. accidents at the construction sites, the buildings possibly collapsing outright. Yet these seem to be quite rare, so Amman’s now bulging pockets seem to grow as quickly as its buildings.
The flipside of the coin is that real estate is hardly affordable to Joe (or Ahmed) Blow in these parts. Ahmed will usually chalk this up to the high immigration of Iraqis who have fled the old country -usually with enough financial resources - and their immediate demand for suitable living quarters. People are in a hurry to build around here. The smallest square of open field might have an apartment complex on it within months. It’s a simple supply and demand market principle, where mostly the real estate developers earn. Although the king has recently assisted the locals with low cost housing, the difference between the living standards of Ahmed Blow the local and Joe Blow the foreigner is usually the difference between a trailer and a condo.
Low wages for the locals certainly don’t help. I have gained a better understanding of what the wages are for most professions and have to cringe at times. If this were Kathmandu or Bangkok, I’m sure those wages would buy a penthouse. In Amman, they more or less guarantee that you will be living with your parents for most of your life.
The private guards who are so abundant throughout the city, occupying its embassies and shopping malls, earn 200 JD a month, less than three hundred dollars. The median rent in my neighborhood is three times that. Where do people expect these guards to live, in a cave or under the recently erected King Hussein bridge?
Granted, being a guard requires little skill. This is not brain surgery and will never be rewarded as such. Now, examining the wages of one of the professions more approximate to brain surgery will still make you scratch your head.
Having worked within the pharmaceutical industry for the better part of three years, I was asked to inform myself about wages for a possible successor for when I left the company here a couple of months ago, for a long time my main source of income here in Amman. The man should have 3-5 years of experience in the industry, my boss in Switzerland pointed out, and a degree in chemistry. In other words, a Quality Control Chemist, plain and simple. I asked some of the smaller pharmaceutical manufacturers (those who pool their resources) as well as the bigger ones (those who buy politicians for a living). The result: the average QC Chemist makes less than six hundred dinars a month. Read it and weep. This is not a degree in the liberal arts we are talking about here either, but a guy or girl with a degree in chemistry. Big wow. So the guy spends about ten to fifteen thousand bucks per year for tuition at the university just so he can pay it back in his next three or four lives as well – not going to happen, if you ask them. Remember, there’s no such thing as reincarnation in Islam.
Still, six hundred dinars? Eight hundred dollars? Again, this will be the envy of the security guard working at the Embassy, but it will still not be enough to rent an apartment. Add to that the fact that food and fuel prices have gone up in Amman like everywhere else, and suddenly Amman is the next candidate for a shanty town. A huge one.
Of course, I will not pretend to be a hypocrite here. The low wages help any expatriate here, including myself. We pay our nanny 300 JD’s per month, the going rate for any nanny here. That’s roughly four hundred and fifty dollars. Think we could afford that in the States? Nope, an average daycare center would be our lot then. For a long time, I felt uncomfortable with having hired help around the house. We also have a gardener who makes 50 JD a month, roughly seventy dollars. Some colleagues at the Embassy try to rationalize it, like we are making a necessary contribution to the local economy while assisting in keeping unemployment down. Maybe so.
But still: what will the nanny’s son do in the future? Study chemistry?
The flipside of the coin is that real estate is hardly affordable to Joe (or Ahmed) Blow in these parts. Ahmed will usually chalk this up to the high immigration of Iraqis who have fled the old country -usually with enough financial resources - and their immediate demand for suitable living quarters. People are in a hurry to build around here. The smallest square of open field might have an apartment complex on it within months. It’s a simple supply and demand market principle, where mostly the real estate developers earn. Although the king has recently assisted the locals with low cost housing, the difference between the living standards of Ahmed Blow the local and Joe Blow the foreigner is usually the difference between a trailer and a condo.
Low wages for the locals certainly don’t help. I have gained a better understanding of what the wages are for most professions and have to cringe at times. If this were Kathmandu or Bangkok, I’m sure those wages would buy a penthouse. In Amman, they more or less guarantee that you will be living with your parents for most of your life.
The private guards who are so abundant throughout the city, occupying its embassies and shopping malls, earn 200 JD a month, less than three hundred dollars. The median rent in my neighborhood is three times that. Where do people expect these guards to live, in a cave or under the recently erected King Hussein bridge?
Granted, being a guard requires little skill. This is not brain surgery and will never be rewarded as such. Now, examining the wages of one of the professions more approximate to brain surgery will still make you scratch your head.
Having worked within the pharmaceutical industry for the better part of three years, I was asked to inform myself about wages for a possible successor for when I left the company here a couple of months ago, for a long time my main source of income here in Amman. The man should have 3-5 years of experience in the industry, my boss in Switzerland pointed out, and a degree in chemistry. In other words, a Quality Control Chemist, plain and simple. I asked some of the smaller pharmaceutical manufacturers (those who pool their resources) as well as the bigger ones (those who buy politicians for a living). The result: the average QC Chemist makes less than six hundred dinars a month. Read it and weep. This is not a degree in the liberal arts we are talking about here either, but a guy or girl with a degree in chemistry. Big wow. So the guy spends about ten to fifteen thousand bucks per year for tuition at the university just so he can pay it back in his next three or four lives as well – not going to happen, if you ask them. Remember, there’s no such thing as reincarnation in Islam.
Still, six hundred dinars? Eight hundred dollars? Again, this will be the envy of the security guard working at the Embassy, but it will still not be enough to rent an apartment. Add to that the fact that food and fuel prices have gone up in Amman like everywhere else, and suddenly Amman is the next candidate for a shanty town. A huge one.
Of course, I will not pretend to be a hypocrite here. The low wages help any expatriate here, including myself. We pay our nanny 300 JD’s per month, the going rate for any nanny here. That’s roughly four hundred and fifty dollars. Think we could afford that in the States? Nope, an average daycare center would be our lot then. For a long time, I felt uncomfortable with having hired help around the house. We also have a gardener who makes 50 JD a month, roughly seventy dollars. Some colleagues at the Embassy try to rationalize it, like we are making a necessary contribution to the local economy while assisting in keeping unemployment down. Maybe so.
But still: what will the nanny’s son do in the future? Study chemistry?
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