“Adjusted for inflation, those numbers are lower in purchasing power (and in some cases dollars) than the published numbers when I graduated”
A common starting salary in the early ‘80s was $26-27K / yr for mech/ee/aero; bit higher for chemE/PetE.
Taking a simplistic scale factor of ~ 5X inflation since then (mostly home price), starting salaries now should be around $100-125K. Obviously they are not. There are some notable exceptions for companies that offer stock options, but that’s a small group. In general the result is that engineering salaries are lower across the board.
I am a little over 20 years into my career. I now make 6 figures, but not as an engineer.
One company I was at told me “I can get three engineers from China and pay half of what I pay you. It is unreasonable to expect another raise.”
So I left and the spent 5 years and 8 engineers trying to figure out what I did.