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I've never understood the line, "if dealers make too much money why don't you do it?" Dealing is not a satisfying career for most people. Should a high school math teacher quit his day job to pitch cards for twice the cash? Just because the answer is no (for most hs math teachers) doesn't mean the dealer isn't getting an incredible wage.

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By this definition they aren't over paid. Someone is overpaid if they make so much money that it attracts others to the field to compete with them. When places can't fill the positions that means the wage is less than what is needed to attract people to the job. The two biggest complaints I see about dealers are they aren't any good and they make too much money. Those can't both be true; if the dealers aren't any good it is because they aren't making enough to attract the best dealers.

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Both things you mention actually could be true if the job structure isn't set up so that better dealers can outcompete worse dealers.

In other words, supposed Harrah's hires dealers for the WSOP of poker this way:

Question 1:, can you deal NL Hold em.
Answer 1: Yes.

Question 2: Were you one of the first 500 dealers to apply who also answered Yes to question 1.
Answer 2: Yes.

Question 3: You're Hired!
Answer 3: Excellent! Oh yeah, refresh my recollection, which is better a straight or a flush?


In the above scenario, if you paid the dealers $1000 an hour to deal at the WSOP you could have dealers that are both incompetent and overpaid.

The number of complaints I hear about dealers implies to me that players are either very prone to complain, or that cardrooms don't have effective systems for allowing the better dealers to prevail in the hiring/retention process over worse dealers.

Or you could be correct and the compensation simply isn't enough to attract the best dealers to the profession.

I'm not sure we have enough information to know which of the above is true.