Yet the distinction between job-satisfaction and pay packet is one we can all recognise.
As a waiter or bartender, a light pay packet can at least be supplemented by tips.
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That is a serious amount of money, around 4% of an average gross pay packet.
To be middle class is to draw a pay packet weekly or monthly, rather than daily or hourly.
Jobs prospects for young people are starting to look a bit healthier - though the average pay packet is not.
The government, however, argues that GPs have been given enough cash to meet their overheads, and their pay packet will be unaffected.
There was a brief wage freeze, but since then she says her pay packet has kept up with the rising cost of living.
Taylor told the court he knew his actions were wrong and illegal but established the trade to boost his reputation and pay packet.
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Our central bank has neither prevented nor even predicted this prolonged period of excess inflation, which has so devalued the average pay packet.
Ms Bailey had said she would leave at the end of the year following shareholder anger over her large pay packet and deteriorating sales figures.
Richard Grasso, Mr Thain's predecessor, who was booted out after a scandal over the size of his pay packet, did not manage this in his long tenure.
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He has already been forced to sell assets he would rather have kept: Phibro, a commodities-trading firm, was ditched to assuage anger over its boss's pay packet.
It's complex, but the purpose in designing such a pay packet is summed up by Kenneth Clarke, the chairman of BAT's remuneration committee and a former chairman of the exchequer.
The small business community is also upset that it has to implement some of the government's tax changes, for example the Working Families Tax Credit, which became payable through the pay packet from April.
Workers will have the option to opt out of the pension savings scheme, and will be given details of how to do this before they start to see their contributions being diverted from their pay packet.
After years in the bush, the rebels are sick of fighting, horribly malnourished and surrendering in their thousands in the hope of a few bowls of maize porridge and a pay packet in the regular army.
Winsor says officers should get a flat 10% hourly bonus for work between 8pm and 6am - but at the same time they should lose some of the rights they have to various overtime boosts to the pay packet.
The same reflex may even inhibit Dominique Strauss-Kahn, boss of the IMF and the Socialists' most competent leader, from running for the presidency in 2012: he is damaged by his big pay packet and the link to Washington money.
Adding to his credentials, he has already turned around a troubled institution (the exchange was reeling when he took over in 2004, after Richard Grasso was ousted because of his enormous pay packet) and he has bags of experience in the areas where Merrill is most deficient (he ran the mortgage-bond desk at Goldman Sachs before becoming the investment bank's chief operating officer).
Japanese users pay by the packet for the data they use on DoCoMo's networks, but Americans, accustomed to flat-fee Net and phone deals, may balk at pay-per-use pricing that can result in month-end sticker shock.
Picture quality will likely be sacrificed at first to keep the data downloads smaller (customers will pay by the data packet, rather than the minute).
And it features what is called mobile Internet protocol (IP), a packet data service that requires users to pay only for the amount of data they send and receive rather than for the amount of time spent on line.
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