In Reply to: Re: Well paying jobs posted by RRC on January 25, 2010 at 06:50:
: : : The American Petroleum Institute (API) has a series of television ads where the spokesperson talks about "well paying jobs." See http://www.api.org/aboutapi/ads/ To my ear that phrase sounds incorrect. "Good paying jobs" sounds correct. Recently U.S. President Obama used "well paying jobs" in a televised speech. Anyone have any comments?
: : Neither sounds quite right to me. I would say 'well-paid jobs'.
: : DFG
: To a grammar stickler, "good paying jobs" can only be good jobs that also happen to pay (unlike good non-paying jobs) since good is an adjective it must modify jobs and not paying. Well-paid jobs sound like they're over and done with to me. I did the job and was well paid. Now what am I going to do next week?
I see your point, but 'well-paid jobs' is firmly idiomatic, I think.
'There are still well-paid jobs to be had in the banking sector' would be, in my opinion, a perfectly unexceptionable sentence and one that would be familiar to most Eastpondians at least.
DFG