Salary
Average Salary: $35,360
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $1,476,209
You won't work for peanuts, but there may be times you'll be expected to work for peanut brittle.
Yeah, most of the time you'll get your check in a timely manner and in the correct amount, but during the lean months (January through August), you may occasionally have to suck it up and suffer intermittent pay cuts along with everyone else.
Of course, you can bet the guy in the big office won't be counted among that number. In rich times or in poor, that fella's lining his pockets with more than just red satin and puffs of cotton.
After a brief apprenticeship, elves start out at $8.25 an hour (there's currently a push to raise that to $9.25 an hour, but the proposal is—predictably—meeting with some awfully tough resistance from the Clauses).
As with most jobs, the longer you stick with it, the more you can work your way up that chimney. Put in fifty years and you should be raking in $15.00 an hour; stick around for two hundred and you'll be making closer to $25.00, which is some pretty sweet bank. If you're one of the old guard, with more than five hundred years of service to The Man, then you become eligible to be salaried.
Some retirement-averse elves are actually pulling down more than $75,000 per year. So...if you dream of one day living in a Candy Castle of your own, it's possible. But for most elves with Starburst in their eyes, it's a dream that'll never become a reality.