I've always had a huge interest in history, I've been thinking on trying to become a historian but... what do you actually do? How do you get hired/paid? And for what? I know that there are education career paths but what else, how do you get paid for studying the past? Every reply is greatly appreciated!!
Personally, I have gone the academia route and so take lectures, tutorials, mark assignments etc. for income. In my country (New Zealand) the government hires historians to assist with Te Tiriti o Waitangi settlements and the Waitangi tribunal for that, to research into claims brought to the tribunal by applicants. Local libraries also have archives and often have historians working in those to pull together stories and take care of the materials (although extra training is generally required for archivist work). If you have studied local history, there may be similar opportunities in your country working for government bodies like that.
Personally I don't get paid for studying the past, since I didn't stay in academia. Now I work as a translator, which actually uses a lot of skills that I learned in school studying to become an historian. It's a good paying job, and I can do it sitting at home on my butt watching TV and scrolling through Reddit.
And then in my spare time, I can do all the fun historical research that I used to do in school. I just don't get paid for it! I'm an "independent scholar" or an "alt-academic" or whatever other names we use these days.
A lot of people I went to school with did end up teaching in a college or university, but certainly not all of them. In fact, if you expect to go to school and become an historian teaching in a university...you probably won't. You might get to teach at a school temporarily but probably not forever. It just doesn't happen that way these days, for various reasons.
I always like to include this list of the kinds of jobs my friends from school have: aside from translators like me, there are also people who work for publishing companies (in academic or popular presses, as editors or salespeople), novelists, journalists, lawyers, priests, politicians, librarians, museum curators or guides, elementary/high school teachers, musicians, actors, therapists, economists, some people joined the military...I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. Of course, not all of them still consider themselves scholars who still research and write and publish.
But there are lots of possibilities doing history work and getting paid for it, and for doing history work and not getting paid for it...or you can also study history in school and then go on to do lots of other things instead.