I am an engineer and for these average earnings I’d go get a trade license and start a business within a few years. Why? For starters and just off the top of my head:
1. Probably better pay or lifetime earnings than these averages.
2. Everybody has to satisfy customers but at least in a trade you usually know what to deliver instead of playing guessing games for some oaf who only knows what he / she does not want.
3. You will never be part of corpocracy or diversity training. All you have to do is produce good product at a competitive price.
4. Stuff breaks all the time and you will probably never be out of work. If you are an engineer you will mostly be last hired and first fired and you will probably never see the bullet coming.
5. While rewarding at times, if you get into a creative role, line engineering can be awfully repetitive. Problem solving and inventing are fun but a lot never get to do either.
6. Most of the time, to get into a place where you can make good money you have to get into management and you will learn then that all your problems have two feet.
7. For the degree of effort to become a really good engineer you can become a really good something else that probably pays better. If you want a decent 9-5 job being an engineer is not a bad gig. I never worked 9-5 and most good and successful engineers don’t either, more like 7-5 or 7-7 most days.
8. You rattle around in an office a lot of the time and if that is your cup of tea, have at it.
9. Most engineers are just technicians. They follow a protocol seldom using their training outside that box.
10. In a trade and your own business you are pretty much inflation proof since you set your rates and do not just have your compensation determined. As an employee of a corpocracy you will eventually find that your late career salary is similar to your inflation adjusted starting salary. My late Father said that big companies can pay big benefits but not all do. Stock options and such can add up in longevitiy pay if you live long enough.
11. If you build a business you will either have something to pass on or to sell one day.
Can’t say a thing about the computer related fields. A lot of them are not engineers anyway.
Petroleum Engineers were once at the top of the compensation heap but they are in slim demand these days. That work ebbs and flows and if you join it you will have a career much like a gold miner mostly from one camp to another in and out of work or expecting the next layoff. That is the way it was from 1982. About half of my 40 years were not salad days.
I was a consulting petroleum engineer the last 20 years of my 40 year career. I traveled the world drilling holes in the earth, had a lot of fun, invented a few things, solved a lot of challenging problems and I think was successful and made good money doing it all. I also was able to get out before anyone tried to make me diverse or truly fell victim to diversity discrimination. Most people in my business made a whole lot more than these averages. Even a non-degreed subsea tech or driller made at least double these averages for a time while employed.
If you are a white male these days and don’t want to be a lick-spittle or meekly conform you had better find a trail you can travel alone and not join a corporation or especially any giverment employment.
That’s the way I see it.
Spot on. My wife and I are both self employed.
Lot of hassles though also being self employed. When self employed you are on the job 24/7. When we go on vacation, vip clients still call and want something taken care of yesterday. More than once I have spent a half day or longer on the phone in a hotel room while on vacation trying to get a problem taken care with a vip customer.