I agree with you Charlie Fox, GA doesn't owe anyone a living, but neither is there any excuse for the prevailing attitude at many (read "most") flying schools of "well if you don't do it for free I know ten other people who will". On my current wages I'd have to be in the air for about 3 thousand hours a year to make forty grand (i.e. logging over 50 hours a week). Truth is that I do work more than forty hours most weeks and get paid for about ten of those hours. If it rains for a few days, I don't get paid at all! I'm positive at work and I do develop a good rapport with my students, but I just wish there was a light at the end of the tunnel sometimes! The stress of not knowing whether I'll get paid this week - going further into debt just to stay afloat - really takes its' toll after a while.
It wasn't always like this - there has been a real downward spiral of conditions for instructors in the last few years in NZ due to the pressure on jobs created by the number of young people moving into the system with nowhere to go. This problem has in turn been created by the absolute lack of movement within the airlines since the early '90s. Maybe things are different in Oz. I appreciate from an operator's point of view that the profit margins in GA are paper thin, but it's also my opinion that good staff are a company's best asset. Perhaps it's time for an across-the-board price hike in training costs, and actually budget a factor in there for paying the pilots a living. That is, after all, what happens in the airlines, why can't it be the case in GA?
Gosh that sounds depressing! I'm not trying to whinge but I think it's important that anyone contemplating going instructing down here should walk into it with their eyes open and not expect to actually earn a living from doing it, not at first anyway.
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Use the force!!