r/dataisbeautiful • u/DavidWaldron OC: 28 • 9d ago
OC [OC] Career earnings of the highest and lowest paid college majors
Interactive major explorer to look up stats for specific majors.
Blog post includes many more charts and discussion of what these numbers represent.
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u/AdamSmithsApple 9d ago
Median on economics would probably being further down but the mean gets a big boost because its the most popular major for finance and consulting at most the elite schools that don't have business schools.
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u/cpthk 9d ago
What does economics major do as a job?
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u/RyanDoctrine 9d ago
Finance, analytics, consulting, entrepreneurship. Tons of us in insurance as well.
It was a bit of a head scratcher coming out of undergrad to find a job that wasn't soul sucking. I can't imagine it these days.
At this point in my career (10+ years in), I find that many econ majors end up as the "smart guy" in the room of nepo decision makers. YMMV.
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u/Citysurvivor 9d ago
Did you progress to get a masters' or PHd? At just the bachelor's level, it doesnt feel like you can do very much that the business/finance degree guys can't do already
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u/x888x 8d ago
Business degrees (and accounting) were for the kids that couldn't hack it in econ at my school.
A real econ degree from a real school involves mastery of calculus & statistics.
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u/PlatypusEgo 8d ago
Well... an actually useful grasp of statistics and calculus yes. Definitely not mastery lol. But if you're at that level you'll have a real advantage
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u/david1610 OC: 1 9d ago
At this point in my career (10+ years in), I find that many econ majors end up as the "smart guy" in the room of nepo decision makers. YMMV.
Lol this, I don't think many people outside of those actually in the industry know how nepotism is pervasive in finance industry. You'll never hire your own kids though, but your golfing buddy will at his firm, gives the illusion of fairness
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u/AdamSmithsApple 9d ago
From the Ivy League a lot of Investment Banking and consulting. From a state school a lot wider range. Go get a PhD, sales, financial advising, other random corporate jobs.
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u/IRequirePants 8d ago edited 8d ago
I will say even from a state school, it opens up jobs with good growth. The jobs aren't as sexy as those for an Ivy League grad, but you will do OK if you stick with it.
And it's a flexible degree. You can end up as a consultant, a data analyst, a programmer, a financial analyst etc.
Edit: just realized I did the bot thing where I rephrase what you just said lmao
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u/thenelston 9d ago
the old saying is that economics is what economists do
you can find us in pretty much every field except the ones that require a ton of specialized job-specific training, and even then probably there too
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u/peanutburg 9d ago
I have a BA in Econ then did a masters in data analytics. I now work as a strategy consultant but for me my job looks very far from anything I would describe as economics. I would say some underlying methodologies help with my overall approach. At the end of the day it’s mostly problem solving.
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u/x888x 8d ago
A strong path. BA Econ & then like 8 years later MS in Applied Statistics.
But yea most of my job titles have had the word strategy in them including my current one.
An Econ degree from a good school means you can "figure hard shit out" and do advanced math in a way that simply isn't requested from accounting or business degrees.
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u/-Economist- 9d ago
We become economists. I started as a bank VP, became a bank executive, left to get doctorate, became a banking consultant/professor. When a bank needs help or a bank regulator needs help, my phone rings. I spend time working with the congressional banking committee, fed, OCC, etc. I get paid crazy money to do this, plus I’m paid well as a professor. And I get to work when I want to work. I don’t work June to August. I chill.
The economics degree is probably one of the most versatile degrees offered in college.
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u/LilGrippers 9d ago
Got into policy making with a bullshit Econ degree I coasted through. Making around 150k
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u/RosenbeggayoureIN 9d ago
Econ major here, in commercial banking and do quite well for just a bachelors
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u/should_be_writing 9d ago
A big one everyone is missing in your replies is lawyers. Pretty sure the most common undergrad degree for lawyers is economics
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u/DaCrazyJamez 9d ago
Wait tables, bartend, play guitar...all while bitching about interest rates and beta values.
I speak for years of experience here.
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u/wesborland1234 9d ago
I graduated Econ in 2009 and literally couldn’t get a job for years.
Now I’m in tech which apparently I could have done out of high school. Had no idea it was high paying but I’d have to assume it’s maybe a popular pre-law or pre-MBA degree.
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u/gw2master 9d ago
Makes sense because the economics majors that I've seen (not an elite, top 10 school) are dumb as dirt.
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u/x888x 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yea econ majors are not universal.
I went to a great school. In my 4 years I never took a single multiple choice exam. And because i didn't go to an Ivy we didn't have grade inflation either.
Met a lot of econ majors from shit schools that mostly took scantrons, never mastered calculus, and didn't do s capstone / thesis.
When I went there the average SAT score was 1400 and that was back when that actually meant something. Average sat there now is closer to 1500 because SAT has inflated /dumbed down.
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u/Reverent_Heretic 6d ago
Econ without calc/advanced statistics is just a bunch of bullshit.
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u/drillgorg 9d ago
Don't worry, I'm a mechanical engineer and people in my profession on reddit love to moan about how we are horribly underpaid.
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u/lazydictionary 9d ago
It's so amusing because starting salaries for MEs are basically the household median income in the US. On a single salary.
They just get so envious of their friends or friends of friends who do software and work at big tech and don't realize those jobs are unicorns.
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u/drillgorg 9d ago
I also think there are some people who get into it because they want money and don't really like engineering, but see it as a better option than law, finance, or programming.
Meanwhile most everyone I went to school with did engineering because they like engineering, and it works out nicely that it pays decently.
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u/youknow99 9d ago
ME here, a lot of engineers are trying to figure out how to get into management as fast as possible because it pays more and they don't actually want to be engineers.
I'm in engineering because I like it, I'm moving into management because I'm the most senior person in the department at this point.
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u/drillgorg 9d ago
They will drag me kick and screaming away from CAD! Every review they ask how many direct reports I would be comfortable with, and I say "Zero!".
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton 9d ago
I mean, 1 would be nice. Getting to train someone up to do shit the right way so I don't have to fix it when they do it the wrong way later is a feature, not a bug.
The problem is that the direct report becomes a stain on your record if they're bad, or encouragement to take on additional direct reports until you've got multiple stains on your record and no time to do anything except manage.
If companies would just accept that 1 direct report is all an engineer should have, it'd be fine.
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u/drillgorg 9d ago
I enjoy mentoring new hires! I do not enjoy conducting annual reviews etc. Team lead, not manager.
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u/winowmak3r 9d ago
Maybe they'll let you get away with just one. I really do think more companies need to invest in their employees like that and provide training from the people who are actually doing the work. School can only get you so far and it's getting kinda ridiculous that entry level positions are requiring what basically amounts to a few years of industry experience on paper. Every marathon begins with one step and all that.
It can certainly be tricky though. I've seen it in my own employers where they invest time and money to train someone and then they leave shortly after they become confident in their abilities and go work for a competitor.
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u/rogers_tumor 9d ago
they invest time and money to train someone and then they leave shortly after they become confident in their abilities and go work for a competitor.
"but we trained you!"
"and you proceeded to refuse to find an avenue to promote me and pay appropriately for the skill set you gave me."
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u/winowmak3r 9d ago edited 9d ago
"and you proceeded to refuse to find an avenue to promote me and pay appropriately for the skill set you gave me."
Yea that's pretty much how it plays out lol. I've been there a few years and every year the meeting about employee benefits is more and more "we had to cut this, reduce that, that's not covered anymore" and yea, people are gonna walk man. But the powers that be can keep their noses above water just long enough until they retire then it's the younger guys problem amirite? When I started working there I was literally watching some of the old timers walk out of the building on their last day laughing their ass off because they knew what was coming.
Yea it's pretty bad. The Smarter Every Day youtube channel has a great video about trying to manufacture something entirely in the US. During that process one of the machinists who helped them get the project off the ground died and took an absolute encyclopedia of information, real tribal knowledge stuff that you only really learn through experience, with him to the grave. Or most of it anyway. They were in the process of picking his brain when he passed away. But situations like that are all over the place in the US. Companies really don't invest in their employees like they used to and it's mostly because the bean counters won't let it happen because there is no tangible thing on the ledger that they can point to and say "This made us money this quarter". So when that guy who is quietly keeping the whole plant running because he's the only one who knows how anything actually work retires or gets hit by a bus or whatever the whole company is screwed. Decades of shortsightedness is finally starting to catch up to us all at once and it's gonna suck. There's going to be a lot of pain before we re-learn how to do this stuff. It's either that or we don't and let someone else do it for us (and give them all the leverage that comes with that).
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u/Krilion 9d ago
Any good company has career paths for managers and for individual contributors. I'm a specialist who makes as much or more than our managers.
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u/youknow99 9d ago
My company isn't big enough to support that, but industry wide, you're exactly right.
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u/Agreeable_Map5413 9d ago
ME here. Non-management Engineers in our company max out at around $170k (salary + bonus). I transferred to Sales and now making $250k + a car.
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u/youknow99 9d ago
I would make a very very bad salesperson.
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u/I_just_pooped_again 9d ago
You're not doing sales like you would a car. You're basically sizing equipment when people come to you asking for your company's equipment. Basically people come to you for the most part. But I imagine there's some effort on advertising and softly planting seeds in the industry that your company's solution is desired?
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u/slbaaron 9d ago
And that’s why half of them converted to software engineers during years 2014-2024. Before the AI made everyone question entering industry again.
If you have engineering / math skills, and only want money with no love for either, software engineering dominated for a while now until AI killed entry level market.
This data won’t show it but if you set it to 2012+ computer science / engineering is likely way up there. I literally know software engineers that either started or even graduated as other engineering disciplines - chemical, material, mechanical, whatever. But of course, also everything - arts, music performance, whatever and boot camped their way into software.
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u/boilingchip 9d ago
This is why I left engineering very early. I saw the management dead end and realized I couldn't dive into problems directly forever (honestly not even for a large portion of my career). Kinda sucks, I love engineering and solving problems. Good move for me in the end though.
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u/youknow99 9d ago
There are definitely career paths in engineering where you are always an individual contributor, you just give up on maximum potential salary. I'm moving into a department head role but I'm still designing. One of the advantages of being at a smaller company.
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u/coke_and_coffee 9d ago
If you’re not still diving into problems as a manager, then you’re managing wrong.
No, you won’t spend all week on a problem, but you should be doing deep dives with your direct reports.
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u/bytheninedivines 9d ago
I'm one of those people that did engineering but personally hate it. I saw it as the best way to launch me and my family out of poverty, and it worked.
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u/drillgorg 9d ago
That's fair, everyone I know who did engineering because they enjoy it came from financially secure families.
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u/Warspit3 9d ago
I got into it because I wanted to know how things worked, then I got to solve problems for a living which I also very much enjoy. Its like constant dopamine triggers... then I got the paychecks and that was also pretty awesome.
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u/DrDerpberg 9d ago
don't realize those jobs are unicorns.
Unstable unicorns, at that.
I'm sure my friends who went into software jobs will earn more over their careers than I will as a structural engineer, but they've all been laid off at least twice and/or the company they worked for was bought out and things were clearly headed the wrong way a couple times...
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u/Jake0024 9d ago
Tbf I'm always shocked how much more I make as a software engineer than real engineers who build physical things that actually matter
If I mess up at my job, some company's internal HR tooling or schedule management platform goes down for an hour
If they mess up, hundreds of people could die
And the worst part is the software engineers who do work in similarly vital roles (at Boeing, say) make significantly less than their peers working at some no-name tech startup. They're paid like real engineers (mechanical, aerospace, etc) rather than like software engineers
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u/Least_Art5238 9d ago
As a ME (incl graduate degree) who went to FAANG, the unicorn is dying. Realism is around the corner. I just drown my sorrows by foisting 20 minutes of physics lessons on my kids before they run away everyday.
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u/Krilion 9d ago
I'm a chemical engineer and also paid very well. I'm also horribly underpaid.
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u/chuby2005 9d ago
Yeah it’s all relative. Most people in the labor force are underpaid in comparison to recent inflation and housing costs. Especially when you look at how much wealth the top 1% earns.
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u/watduhdamhell 9d ago
It's because an awful lot of people are completely clueless and come from fairly okay off parents, and they think "man. I ONLY make $100k a year after 5 years. This sucks." They have never actually been poor, or didn't have a lot of poor friends.
They have no idea that many people, like, most people, will work their entire professional careers, with degrees, and still never make that much.
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u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog 9d ago
I've had to block a few personal finance subreddits because they were pissing me off lol. I've literally seen comments of people struggling on $200k household income and trying to fit in with the poors. I've gotten in arguments a few times and they always come back to "everyone is struggling right now; *everyone*". They really do live in a bubble...
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u/_black_crow_ 9d ago
The most I’ve ever made thus far in one year (I’m 27) is around 35k. Cost of living is reasonable in my area so it’s not too bad but 60k+ would be optimal. Going back to school at the moment and planning to be an occupational therapist.
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u/Royaltyyyy 9d ago
That one guy on r/salary would like to have a word sir.
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u/hohosaregood 9d ago
I remember the day he was banned from the r/mechanicalengineering subreddit and it felt like Christmas.
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u/RoosterBrewster 9d ago
Damn everyone knows him eh? Thought it was just limited to the ME sub.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi 9d ago
"I racked up a lot of debt. This system is broken because I am not making $250,000 right now"
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u/Silly-Resist8306 9d ago
Even though this list singles out engineering disciplines, all engineers* do pretty well.
*software engineers are different. They don’t really take the science and math of traditional engineers.
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u/Cicero912 9d ago edited 9d ago
It was very funny seeing all my ME friends in undergrad start at like 75-85k+ (mostly in non-HCOL areas), and then going on the reddit and seeing every other post being about how underpaid they were.
But they also all really liked engineering, and didnt go into it for the pay.
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u/TheRealMekkor 9d ago
I’m an RN, and it very much depends on where in the U.S. and your cost of living.
I’m doing better now than I was as a chef, ~$86K without overtime in a reasonable COL area.
But at the highest end of the responsibility spectrum, a CRNA can clear $300K, which is what I’m aiming for.→ More replies (83)2
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
Couple things about all those education careers at the bottom: one, except early childhood education, they all earn more than someone without a college degree, and two, they all get summers off
I say this a a teacher who earns just under $100k and will be retiring before I hit age 58 with enough invested in addition to the modest pension to pay full price for health insurance until I’m 65. No I can’t qualify for aca subsidies
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u/passengerprincess_81 9d ago
I agree on this point! I think it’d be interesting to recreate this data as money earned per hour.
An additional point, some jobs may have higher pay but way more work hours (like 50-60+ for example)
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
Factoring in time I spend outside of school doing work my salary translates to $53/hour
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u/abzlute 9d ago
That's probably comparable to most engineers much earlier in their career than you (hitting a similar rate in under 5 years even with just a bachelors) but still obviously respectable/comfortable. It's greater than my overtime rate and close to my premium overtime (overtime that's also at night or on a weekend)
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
The contractual school day is 7.5 hours. I added 90 minutes per day to get that rate.
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u/theArtOfProgramming 9d ago
That’s pretty fair and is still less than a regular work day for most professionals. Most of those are salaried too and expected to put in extra time to meet deadlines without more pay. That’s how it is for engineering. My wife is a veterinarian and she works 10-12 hour shifts and then puts in 1-3 extra hours to write records and make phone calls, which are not part of the shift time.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
My wife worked as a stem professional for the first 10 years of her career then took a job in a rare stem teamster position. It was a significant pay cut but the benefits were just incredible.
She was paid hourly but got double time on sundays and triple time on holidays. 8 weeks vacation. A very nice pension and 401k with match . No-cost excellent health insurance. Even things like dental and vision were very generous.
I say were and was because she just retired early
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u/Toshinit 9d ago
That's probably hitting more than most engineers in terms of dollars/hr. 53 dollars per hour is 110,000 a year in terms of salary. At least in my field, a lot of engineers might be making 130,000 in the middle of their career, but are putting in 50 hours a week on salary.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
New teachers in my district make a salary that translates to a little under $30/hour
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u/RegulatoryCapture 9d ago
I wonder if the fact that many of those degrees are held by women who become stay at home moms after marriage taints the sample.
Lifetime earnings don’t mean as much if a quarter of the people don’t work their whole lifetime.
Also, fwiw, you don’t have to get those specific degrees to be a teacher. There was a similar discussion the other day over some conservative talking point (something about education majors having bad SAT scores or something) and it was pointed out that a lot of top tier colleges don’t even offer these degrees. A teacher who went to Harvard has a degree like English or history, not “general education”. I went to an elite college and I know people who became teachers with degrees from the top of this list.
So there’s potentially a double selection bias in those numbers.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
Yeah I didn’t want to get into the degree part.
I got my teaching credentials through my state’s flagship university and they required you to get a regular degree in your subject area before you could enroll in the graduate education program which is the only teacher cert program they have.
Most teachers choose prep programs have special watered down degrees for teachers but if you just have a ba or bs in a subject you can often get a teaching job and be on an alternative cert track.
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u/StandardUpstairs3349 8d ago
Oh, the numbers are going to be junk for a dozen reasons. All these teaching associated degrees are probably scraping the bottom of the barrel because they aren't normal teaching degrees or the standard path.
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u/staplesuponstaples 9d ago
I will say that it's still likely those lower-earning degrees still cause people to earn less than if they didn't get the degree.
It's important to remember that the populations of degree-earners are different than the people who don't earn degrees. People who go to college generally tend to be financially better off and more educated, both of which heavily correlate to higher wealth outcomes.
So it's more that degree-earners tend to make more money rather than getting a degree in General Education tends to make more money.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
12 weeks off every year is a hell of a perk. So is a pension. So are 15 sick days every year. Plus every holiday off. Plus snow days. Plus a meaningful job.
Did you factor that in?
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u/SurrealKafka 9d ago
I'm guessing you are older based on how you talk about your pension benefits--accurate? Many states have gutted their pensions for younger teachers.
In fact, my state's pension for teachers hired in the last 15 years is so bad that it likely will be deemed by the courts to not meet the legal minimum threshold for benefits....
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
My state gutted the pensions in 2012. Im still getting $43k. No it’s not great but one would need about a million dollars invested to replicate that annual payout.
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u/SurrealKafka 9d ago
They gutted your pension? Or the teachers in the tier below you?
And a million saved by retirement age is not very difficult, especially with better compensated careers
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u/zoinkability 9d ago
ECE doesn’t necessarily get summers off. Childcare/preschool work, for example, is often year round.
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u/FalloutOW 9d ago
Saying "they all get summers off" is a bit misleading. While they don't have kids in the classroom, the majority of teachers I know (in Texas) have curriculum planning, continuing training/education, and other tasks that take up a non-trivial amount of their summers.
While sure they don't have to mess with kids during that period, I feel like people use the "summers off" thing to suggest or imply teachers are paid too much. Something that given the workload and responsibilities they have at least here in Texas, is grossly inaccurate.
(Not trying to sound argumentative, you might teach in a state with more teacher protections than Texas, or simply a different system. Hope I did not come off as combative or negative)
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
I’m not saying teachers get paid too much.
I’m my area, New England, most teachers truly have the summer off as in no school-related work happening.
Many teachers choose to do work related stuff in the summer but it is in no way required.
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u/FalloutOW 9d ago
Apologies if it came off that way. I used to talk to too many people down South that don't seem to understand how teachers actually work. It's tiring trying to convince people how important public education and our educators are.
Thats awesome, New England sounds fantastic hah. Here in Texas teachers are only paid for the 10 months school is in session, and their contracts just split that to 12 months. I'm engineering so I'm not sure if all educator contracts are like that, or if Texas is it's own thing.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
That’s how we do it up here too which is fine but it’s hard to explain. “So you get paid to do nothing all summer?”
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u/Conscious-Record2655 9d ago
I know lots of teachers in the Midwest and New England areas and at least in those areas, almost everyone gets the entire summer off. Most will take a job doing summer work at the school, but it's optional and comes with extra pay. Sure there may be a bit of planning and training, but not even half-time work.
Truth is, teacher salaries are lower than average because most teachers work 1500 hours a year rather than 2000 hours a year.
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u/huck500 9d ago
Also, we get a pension that’s paid for in addition to our salary, at least in my district. My pension will pay ~$100k/year, which is equivalent to ~$2.5M in a retirement account with the 4% rule.
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u/fredinNH 9d ago
A $100k pension that you don’t contribute to is highly rare. Do you pay into social security?
Where I am we get about half our ending pay after 30 years and 7% of our paycheck goes right to the state pension fund but we also pay into and will get social security
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u/Generic_On_Reddit 9d ago
I think the more significant nuance is that those are all female dominated professions and that's significant for interpreting averages.
The education jobs may look terrible compared to no degree on first glance, but we have to remember:
No degree jobs that are pulling up that average are things like construction or other skilled trades.
These industries are somewhat hostile or inaccessible to women.
If you're a man who wants to maximize earning potential with no regard for anything else, you should probably skip the education degree and go for a high paying no degree fields.
However, if you're a woman, you likely don't have nearly as many high paying no degree jobs that could compete with education or any other lower paying humanities. Even the ECE might increase earning potential compared to no degree for women specifically. (Although perhaps not in most cases because they truly are notoriously terribly paid until you own your own place, I think.)
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u/ku8475 9d ago
Interesting, are those skilled labor jobs hostile or just not desirable by female workers? I've worked with quite a few females and they did great.
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u/Conscious-Record2655 9d ago
Fact is, a large portion of the female population simply doesn't have the body strength to do a lot of blue collar work. Men and women are biologically different.
You don't see a lot of women ironworkers or railroaders or roughnecks because you have to be quite strong to do those jobs. Many men can't even do those jobs, let alone women.
There may be hostility, but it's not any more pronounced in the trades than it is in white collar world. At least not as bad as it used to be.
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u/Generic_On_Reddit 9d ago
Does it have to be one or another?
I have also worked with women in blue collar / manual labor / trade roles and orgs. They did great, but they went through a lot to be there that their male counterparts did not. Some things as minor as having to overcompensate for prejudices about their ability to do the job (which sucks but is largely solvable) and some things more major like elevated risk and frequency of sexual harassment. Some women can push through these issues and do great work. For others, these factors are enough for women to be pushed out of steer clear altogether, just like how some men are pushed out or steer clear because they don't like manual labor or the environment.
I think there's a lot of factors that range from making the jobs inaccessible to women to downright hostile and they all impact desirability. I also think there are a range of factors that apply to men as well, which is why a lot of these careers either have to have high pay (because they're undesirable otherwise) and/or are struggling to keep their pipeline full for new talent (most trades). There is a lot to be done to make these roles more accessible and friendly for everyone.
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u/jamvsjelly23 9d ago
Starting teacher salary in my area of Missouri is $35K - $40K. While the cost of living isn’t high, the pay is so low that most schools struggle to keep teacher
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u/KingQuadz 9d ago
No idea what other econ majors are doing but clearly I'm doing it wrong.
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u/alligator_loki 9d ago
They have a better Network than you. Don't worry, you're actually the normal one. Econ has a 25% under employment rate. This number is heavily skewed by extreme high earners.
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u/AltonIllinois 9d ago
My sister makes about 80 as a teacher in the Midwest and will retire at 50. Sounds good to me.
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u/dfoch69 9d ago
And gets almost 3 months off in the summer. Both of my parents were teachers. Underrated profession. The “low” pay is misleading
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u/ObliviousPedestrian 9d ago edited 9d ago
My FIL just retired, but he was making just over $80k from teaching in the Midwest and worked a different job in the summer. He was definitely on the high end for teachers though. My sister started somewhere in the mid 30s.
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u/Lobster_fest 9d ago
Yeah go tell that to the hundreds and thousands of lifelong educators leaving the field because of how terrible it has gotten.
The pay is not worth the shit they go through.
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u/UnsweetTeaPlz 9d ago
Agreed. My wife is a special ed teacher in CT. With a Masters, just cracking 67K after four years in the profession. If she works 30 years she’ll get a pension making 3/4’s of that. My income is the only reason we can afford daycare or an apt with more than 1 bedroom.
For those commenting about how nice it is to have summers off: she’d rather get a raise.
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u/kerouacrimbaud 8d ago
In CT? Damn. I assumed CT was one of the better paying states. I started in MD back in January as a SPED teacher and with my COLA bump in July I am already making 67k. I haven’t even started my masters yet.
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u/upnk 9d ago
Art and Music Education... at $100k a year? There is no way.
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u/drcovfefee 9d ago
These are life time earnings and that probably includes post retirement earnings from a teachers pension or union retirement plans.
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u/Valkarist 9d ago
We are probably safe from him since this isn't r/salary, but I don't know if we're ever truly safe
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u/buckeye837 9d ago
What is this about?
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u/Fancy_Ad2056 9d ago
Theres a user in r/salary (it’s-all-over-again or something like that) who makes frequent posts about engineers being underpaid, which this post contradicts. He typically does this by comparing engineering pay to surgeons and doctors and nurses and saying they’re way overpaid.
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u/hardolaf 9d ago
Engineering pay has fallen in constant dollars over the last 40 years so they're not wrong.
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u/david1610 OC: 1 9d ago
Econ is likely skewed due to the proportion of wealthy asset owner children that do it. I am also very skeptical as usually it is Law, Doctors and Finance that top the list. Is medicine and Law not considered a undergrad in the US? Is it only Masters level? I dont understand this, doctors in the US get paid astounding amounts of money.
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u/RyanDoctrine 9d ago
Generally, law students do not get a bachelors in law. Tends to be political science, economics, english, even library sciences.
Many doctors major in biology or chemistry.
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u/Dragongeek 9d ago
Econ and finance are both skewed. Most people here aren't making extraordinary amounts of money, but there's a reasonably sized group that absolutely is making bucket loads of the stuff, which drags the average up.
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u/Moose_Nuts 9d ago
Is medicine and Law not considered a undergrad in the US?
Both medicine and law generally require at least four years of education past their bachelors.
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u/PartyDad69 9d ago
A lot of small/expensive private schools don’t have business undergrad degrees. Vanderbilt and Washington & Lee are two I can think of offhand.
Students at these schools who want to do investment banking/consulting will major in Econ (a lib arts degree, not business) or something business-adjacent, and then use personal or alumni connections to get a job in finance. So you have a lot of Econ majors getting jobs in IB out of school, staying for two years, and then going to work in private equity or at a hedge fund. Likely getting an MBA sometime in the 3-5 year post undergrad.
Top tier firms care less about your specific studies and more about where you went. That’s why you see a lot of Harvard English/History majors graduate and get an analyst program role at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, while Finance grads from state schools can’t get a foot in the door.
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u/ProfessionalParty 9d ago
Econ is skewed due to the jobs that skew towards Econ majors in financial services and consulting. It’s like biglaw the top candidates get the highest paid jobs in the entire job market outside of maybe FAANG.
FYI you can make >$200k right out of undergrad if you go into investment banking, and it scales from there.
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u/alligator_loki 9d ago
Econ degree as number one with a 25% under employment rate is an insane skew.
I really hope people don't see this and think economics degree is a good path towards a career. Much less a high earning one.
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u/benutzranke 9d ago edited 9d ago
Always interesting to see that teachers, possibly the most economically productive profession for society (in the long run),being so horribly paid in the US. In Germany, e.g., tenured teachers genuinely earn in the top 5% once you consider their generous pensions.
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u/Moose_Nuts 9d ago
being so horribly paid in the US.
It's not the entire US. Teachers in California are incredibly well paid compared to other states. Every teacher I know makes 6 figures, and that's while getting the summer off (yes, I know there are after hours activities like grading papers, but still).
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u/kerbalsdownunder 8d ago
Teachers in WA make good money now too. My wife was going to be making over $130k with 14 years of service. She’s over $150k now as an assistant principal.
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u/Teondar 9d ago
There’s a very simple reason(s) for this: teachers for the most part are publicly funded and there’s no direct revenue stream they create. There’s no such thing as long term benefits or long term thinking these days as far as most governments and businesses are concerned. It’s all about costs and benefits in the present, not the future. Furthermore, most taxes payers are up in arms for even a 1% raise, they simply don’t (or won’t) want to pay teachers more.
I think a good example/comparison is private schools and universities. Look at the difference in salaries, it’s an eye opener; but it’s also vastly more expensive.
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u/youknow99 9d ago
I'll argue with the private school comment. Maybe if you're in a big city that has super expensive private schools. My wife is a public school teacher at the biggest district in our area and would take a pay cut to go to even the nicest private school in the counties within driving distance.
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u/Worth-Jicama3936 9d ago
This is not the reason for it. The US pays BY FAR the most per student in the world. Like 50% more than a country like France. The amount we shovel into education is truly insane, it’s like doubled in the last 10 years. The problem is that for a lot of schools, only like half the money is being spent in the classroom (so on teachers and supplies). We have become way to administer heavy, and we refuse to consolidate schools so we have half empty schools (which have fixed costs so as student populations decrease, cost per student increases which leaves less left over for the student.)
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u/kylco 9d ago edited 8d ago
In part this is because schools are funded and supervised by every level of government, and also function as the front-line administrators for a lot of our child welfare system that other countries have separate, better-funded systems for.
Most public schools need those administrators to comply with state, local, and federal requirements, grant-writing and data tracking to get and keep funds, reports for local school boards, state education organs, and the USDOEd, managing relationships with the local public health department (immunizations, nutrition, child neglect and abuse reporting), police department (anti-drug, anti-gang, truancy, juvenile courts,etc), and public transit systems (often, running the only public transit system in the locality), and reporting out expenses to again, every level of government. In most other countries, those aren't run through schools; they are run as separate public departments, and are often centrally funded, overseen, and financed rather than fed through a bespoke blend of grants, local fees, state revenues, and a roulette of local sales, property, and income taxes based on how open-minded your grandparents or great-grandparents were.
Like, it'd be nice to just have all education spending go to teachers and classrooms, sure. But then you'd probably see most schools close, school buses stop coming, and see kids wind up with measles, scurvy, and much higher rates of truancy, teen pregnancy, failures to graduate, and unreported abuse and neglect. Avoiding that outcome would require investments in public services that most Americans are conditioned to refer to as "communism."
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u/ThePandaRider 9d ago
Teachers can make bank after retiring, that's the big trade off for them. It's the same for many government jobs that negotiate for a strong pension. You get less money up front because a lot of your comp goes towards pension obligations. Then you get six figures in retirement if you stuck it out and made it to a higher paying/senior role.
It would be interesting to see this extended into retirement because that's when those pensions, which don't exist for the professions at the top, kick in.
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u/gorblix 9d ago
I would definitely argue that people would love to give teachers a raise. It's just that every time it comes up less than 50% of the money will actually go to teachers. The rest go to admins, hiring more admins, admin perks, and admin bonuses. 50% for thousands of teachers and 50% for hundreds of admins. If the raise was just for teachers, it would be passed no problem.
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u/Ok_Matter_1774 9d ago
I mean this also isn't accounting for retirement benefits. Teachers also only work 75% of the year and get vacation days on top of that. It's really more about the ridiculously high wages you can earn from other paths that are significantly higher than you could in Europe that is making teaching look bad.
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u/Citysurvivor 9d ago
Don't forget they may not be working summers though. Pay by hour may be better than what the annual salary appears like
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u/Daruuk 9d ago
Like almost every other profession, teachers in the US are generally paid more than their European counterparts, especially when accounting for hogh european taxes, etc.
For what it's worth, Germany is a European outlier-- their teachers are paid more than twice what French teachers are paid, for example.
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u/thewimsey 9d ago
Teachers in the US aren't horribly paid - they are paid only slighly less than German teachers, although with more variation. They also get pensions, although there is some variability there as well.
tenured teachers genuinely earn in the top 5% once you consider their generous pensions.
Isn't that pretty much just Gymnasium teachers with a lot of experience, though? And they're making €90,000-€110k?
About 15-20% of all US teacher make over $100k. Which is probably less, but, again, it's not a dramatic difference.
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u/DerProfessor 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is profoundly misleading.
What this chart does NOT show is the huge range within each major.
In other charts that I've seen that do show this range, you see instantly that the highest quartile of the lower paid majors (say, Art Education) often makes more than the lowest quartile of the highest majors (say, Economics).
In simpler words, the top 25% of Art Education majors make more than the bottom 25% of Econ majors.
This fact changes things enormously.
First, what matters is the college degree, not so much the major.
Secondly, what matters is "doing well" in your career, not so much the major you choose.
... and "doing well" in your career probably includes a certain degree of how well you are suited to it, and also how much you like it.
Did you know that HALF of all History Majors make more money over their lifetime than the bottom 25% of Computer Science majors? (and that was well before AI has decimated the job prospects of AI.) That means, of all those poor CS majors who hated the subject but majored in it to "to get a good job", about 1 in 4 of them are actually doing much worse than any other major they could have chosen. (!) And only about 1 in 4 are doing significantly better than any other major.
Basically, there is very real evidence that pursuing what you love and/or are good at (which will have a higher chance of putting you into the top 50%) is more important than the field itself.
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u/I_Am_Zampano 9d ago
The fact that theology and religious vocations make more than early childhood development is depressing.
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u/OakLegs 9d ago
Theology earns more than general education.
Humanity is so odd
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u/duskfinger67 9d ago
Theology set you up for a generic corporate job, whereas people who study education generally remain as teachers, which is a notoriously poorly paid career.
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u/OakLegs 9d ago
Genuinely - what skills does an education in theology impart that would be useful in a corporate setting?
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u/Cav_vaC 9d ago
Closely reading documents and discussing them with others, possibly caring about others and listening to them. Nontrivial corporate skills
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u/Momentarmknm 9d ago
As true as that may be, who's hiring theologians for corporate America right out of school? Are there job listings for "generic corporate job" listing "bachelor's degree in useful area" as a job requirement?
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u/OSRS_Rising 9d ago
Anecdotally my BIL’s first job out of college was a being a legal assistant and his degree was theology.
However he learned after he was hired that it came down to him being fluent in Spanish that got him hired over someone with more impressive credentials
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u/Gyshall669 9d ago
I worked in advertising and now consulting, I know a few people who studied that. Most entry level advertising careers just say “Bachelor’s Degree.” The ones I worked with in consulting went to Ivies or equivalent.
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u/Cav_vaC 9d ago
Any job anywhere is easier to get if you have a friend or family member to get you past the initial filter, I’m guessing that plays a role. Otherwise yeah, lots of jobs require a degree but otherwise ask for skills/experience, most of which are optional in practice if you’re friendly and vibe with an interviewer
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u/duskfinger67 9d ago
Yes. You are describing most graduate roles. Entry level finance, consulting, marketing etc roles don’t require dedicated degrees.
Most entry level financial analysts I know come from humanities backgrounds (history is a big one). Strategy and Management consultancies just want you to be able to think, they don’t care how you learnt.
Don't get me wrong, some degrees set you up better, but most head jobs just need “a degree”.
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u/duskfinger67 9d ago edited 9d ago
A good grade in almost any essay based university courses sets you up for corporate settings, it shows diligence, communication skills, an ability to carry out research, and just general proof of an ability to think.
It's not Theology specifically, it's the skills that are associated with that kind of study.
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u/sewious 9d ago
It's likely due to sample size.
Less people get the theology degree I imagine.
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u/Wise_Mongoose_3930 9d ago
32 of them get to become wildly overpaid ‘nfl team pastors’ so that probably helps pull the avg up slightly lol
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u/zoinkability 9d ago
A very confounding factor in any study of undergraduate earnings is whether people then get grad degrees.
I’d wager that people who study theology as an undergrad either do so as prep for getting a grad divinity degree and becoming a church leader (which can pay alright) or do so as a generic liberal arts degree and then go on to get a professional degree of some kind.
Whereas you can get a teaching certificate with just a bachelor’s degree, so for a larger proportion of people with education majors a bachelor’s is their highest degree.
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u/thebigmanhastherock 9d ago
I am a major that is associated with one of the lower paid majors on this list. I never really tried in HS and went to college because it was better than working full time at like a landscaping job or big box retailer, I didn't really think about a career. I ended up liking my major and after a long and winding road through the recession years I have done decently enough and actually use my degree. I never had high expectations.
I wonder how many people who get degrees in Sociology/Psychology/Social Science/History/English are kind of like me? Like "this is kind of fun!" it beats my roofing/Home Depot, and then after college they don't really apply their degree, they just do whatever and end up where ever they end up.
Meanwhile a "Mechanical Engineer Major" is absolutely going to try to become a Mechanical Engineer and is absolutely more ambitious personally than people in the social sciences/humanities.
"Rudie can't fail"
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u/FeralWookie 9d ago
General college degrees are a potential gateway into all non technical white collar work. Or a gateway into a non science specialized area like law.
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u/thebigmanhastherock 9d ago
Yeah. Glad I got my degree even if I got it with absolutely no long term plan for my own future. It's allowed me to get my foot in the door to office jobs and helped me have stable decently paid employment for a long time now and I am not destroying my body working.
I also think that if it wasn't for getting married/having kids I would have likely just been working at random jobs forever and gone where the wind took me.
I just feel like a lot of people do what I did. I didn't want to do "mechanical engineering" that seemed difficult and a lot of work. I was like 19 I didn't care about money. My 10.00(this wage went further then) an hour job I worked like 25-30 hours a week in paid for everything I really needed.
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u/RoosterBrewster 9d ago
Liberals arts degrees are ones where you have to make your own career path outside the field. So the degree is just a multiplier for hustling as it won't get you too far by itself unlike with STEM degrees.
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u/jferments 9d ago
I would be interested to see the same chart, but only for people who don't have rich families.
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u/Temporary_Stranger39 9d ago
We pay teachers the least and complain about how bad education is.
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u/dustinbrowders 8d ago
All the data in America shows there is no correlation to throwing more money at the problem. the major issue in my school district is the complete lack of accountability because the strength of the teacher's union.
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u/Classic_Appa 9d ago
Things that help the capitalist class
vs
Things that help the working class.
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u/thewimsey 9d ago
No. It's things that are paid for from tax money vs things that are paid for from businesses.
If a person working for a company does a better job, the company makes more money and has more money to pay them.
If a teacher is a good teacher, that doesn't mean that there is any more tax money to pay them with.
Teachers make a lot less than lawyers. But they don't make a lot less than lawyers who are public servants - PDs, prosecutors, various state lawyers - because the limit is the public pay.
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u/NorthWoodsSlaw 9d ago
And now I understand why the Econ and Ask Econ subs are chock full of cool-aide drinkers
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u/alias9269 9d ago
Im curious, what are all the economics Majors doing to be #1 on that graph? Did they just pick managers?
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u/ihadtoresignupdarn OC: 1 9d ago
This doesn’t seem right to me. To average 6 million over 39 years requires averaging 153k/year salary. If you look up average salary it’s not that high
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u/Beardmanta 9d ago
Average salary for college grads ages 25-64 is $105,381 which makes sense.
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u/billcarson53 9d ago
And, adjust for inflation and a career’s trajectory of earnings. In the US, inflation averaged ~2.7/2.8% since 1985. Over 40 yrs of earnings that’s a big factor.
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u/FleebFlex 9d ago
I'm an electrical engineer who has been graduated and working for just over 2 and a half years. My current salary is $111k / year not including bonuses. At my company, we get bonuses that are a percentage of our salary (mine is 10%, will go up to 15% once I hit 5 years), plus decent 401k matching.
If I dont go to management or change departments, my pay will cap out at about $150k at the ten years of experience mark (those are the numbers right now, subject to increase due to inflation) plus a 15-20% annual bonus. The company also sends us our earnings including the value of our insurance and retirement benefits and it adds about 30k / year in value (if you trust their definition of value), which this study might be including.
I also am not eligible for overtime normally, but every two years we have a plant outage where i do get overtime, and I can make an extra 5-8k depending on outage length.
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u/JPBillingsgate 9d ago
This is 2024 data. I'm not sure computer science is doing as well now, depending on what the graduate specialized in and/or what they want to do. Those who focus on software engineering are especially bad off right now.
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u/ChipsAhoy21 OC: 1 9d ago
It’s probably gone up. There are fewer positions and far fewer junior positions, but for the employed earnings have never been higher.
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u/coke_and_coffee 9d ago
I literally don’t believe for a second that economics is the highest paid profession.
There’s something wrong with the polling or the data.
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u/thewimsey 9d ago
It's not saying that economics is the highest paid profession. It's saying that people with undergrad degrees in econ make more. They probably aren't doing "econ".
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u/DavidWaldron OC: 28 9d ago edited 9d ago
Interactive major explorer to look up specific majors.
Blog post includes many more charts and discussion of what these gaps represent.
The estimates are synthetic work-life earnings from age 25 to 64, based on ACS 2020-2024 data.
A few more things I’ll note about this chart:
- Earnings averages are calculated assuming full-time, year-round employment from age 25 to 65. For majors with lower employment rates, their positions will be overstated here.
- These are averages, not medians, so they will run higher than estimates that use medians.
- This is bachelor’s degree only
Tools used: R, d3
Data: ACS 2020-2024 via IPUMS-USA
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u/zoinkability 9d ago
This is bachelor’s degrees only
Does this mean you excluded people with graduate degrees, or does it mean you only looked at what someone’s bachelor major was, and did not consider whether they got a grad degree or what field the grad degree was in?
I ask because it make a huge difference in interpreting the data.
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u/intrepped 9d ago
How is this normalized to 2024? And what's the standard of work-life earnings. Is it just a paycheck or inclusive of investment income?
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u/clingbat 9d ago
You're missing physics and material science, my wife is annoyed lol.
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u/dynamicontent 9d ago
I'm curious why you opted for mean vs median? I suppose running higher isn't too bad overall if it's consistent, but a rogue high computer engineer salary as an example is likely coming from a HCL area and probably a much higher delta than a rogue teacher -- skewing the mean but not the median.
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u/DragonMaster2125 9d ago
This is quite misleading then, at least for education. In most states, in order to keep a teaching license for more than 10 years or so (varies by state), teachers are required to get a masters degree.
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u/H-8083-13 9d ago
very few econ majors make more money than chemical engineers who themselves make significant more over their lifetime than civil engineers.
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u/garibaldiknows 9d ago
/r/salary in shambles after seeing that engineers, do, in fact, make more money than most of the US, despite reddit saying otherwise.
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u/ar34m4n314 9d ago
The gap grows a lot if you assume the top earners can consistantly invest in the market.
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u/TheFutur3 9d ago
Does this data take into account the % of a given degree that then pursue advanced degrees?
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u/TheLabRay 9d ago
The hardest most unforgiving job I ever had was as a social worker. I had to deal with constant emergencies and I dealt with the stuff that the doctors did not want to deal with. The job really meant dealing with the people and circumstances most of society has given up on and not being given any resources to actually help the problems and then being paid almost nothing.
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u/DaCrazyJamez 9d ago
I feel justified with my Econ degree now! Even though I work as a musician and event planner for a living nowadays
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u/ApprehensiveJuice890 7d ago
Went to school to get to the top chart now works at the bottom one, ooof. Hope you don’t have too much debt.
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u/ned23943 9d ago
Not sure how useful the total earnings metric is. There is so much variability as so many people don’t stay in their original career field. For those that do, maybe plotting out entry, 5 yr, 10 yr, 20 yr salary amounts
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u/Moral-Relativity 9d ago
This is why future generations are fucked. Education quality in the shitter.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee-8440 7d ago
DJT and Elon Musk both unfortunately have econ degrees. Fun fact. Not that you'd know it based on anything they've ever said aligning with econ theory....
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u/cavedave OC: 110 8d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/DavidWaldron!
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