Are the government occupational wage estimates bogus?

There was a comment to my salary taboo post saying that the salaries of various professions are easily discovered because the government publishes data.

Well I looked up the government data and some of it seems pretty bogus to me.

According to the official government data, lawyers earn a mean annual salary of $110,520, apparently based on a forty hour workweek and an hourly salary of $53.13. BIGLAW associates make that much (if you figure they work 60 hour weeks, then that hourly wage comes out to $165,765), but only the luckiest 10% or so of law school graduates get BIGLAW jobs. Graduating in the top 10% of the class didn’t get me any job offers at all except for a $12/hour position as a paralegal.

The official data says that editors make $51,750/year, but an editor responded to my salary taboo post and said he only earns $27,600, half of what the government thinks he’s supposed to make.

On the other hand, the government seems to be understating how much people in the I.T. industry make. Computer programmers allegedly only make $67,400/year. That’s what a commenter said he made as a software tester. I earn $62.50/hour in computer programming, and there are several commenters who say they are paid similarly high rates. We would all get paid a lot more if the government didn’t let massive numbers of immigrant computer programmers into the country.

According to the government data, law school is a no-brainer if you want to make more money. It was this sort of crappy government reporting which probably led me to making the huge mistake of going to law school (as confirmed recently by the Wall Street Journal).

Because of the salary taboo, high school students have only this lousy government data to rely on, and are therefore encouraged to pick seemingly high paying jobs like fashion designers (what girl wouldn’t want to be a fashion designer and make $67,370/year?) which are really bogus fictions, and are turned away from solid careers like computer programming where they can earn a decent living.

Comments

[tc]

"We would all get paid a lot more if the government didn’t let massive numbers of immigrant computer programmers into the country."

According to those BLS numbers, overall median hourly wage is $14.15, overall average yearly is $37,870. No need to cry for us programmers.

[Peter]

According to the government data, law school is a no-brainer if you want to make more money. It was this sort of crappy government reporting which probably led me to making the huge mistake of going to law school (as confirmed recently by the Wall Street Journal).

Law school has become a de facto extension of liberal arts college, just the thing for college graduates with unmarketable B.A. degrees - not only do they get seduced by these Big Money stories, but they also get to postpone facing reality for three years. Not to mention that law school is actually pretty easy - no math, no science, almost no computers, mostly essay tests, the perfect match for technophobic right-brain (or is it left brain, I can never remember) thinkers.

[nobody]

Graduating from law school with diploma is easy, doing well in it is not. The one good thing about law school is that grade inflation is kept in check. Grade distribution is strictly by percentile, so none of this everyone gets an A business.

The problem is, every incoming 1L believe he or she can becoming that top 10% of class. While statistically correct, they tend to igore the fact that more likely they won't be. Grades in law school is only partially controlled by the student since how others in the class do has a great impact on ranking.

[spungen]

Yeah, and check out how "Independent artists, writers, and performers" make a mean income of $75,140.

Clearly there's something skewed about these data. I'm trying to figure out how the mean income for "reporters and correspondents" in the L.A.-Long Beach-Glendale area could possibly be anywhere close to $62,230. Maybe because it counts TV anchorpeople and fossils at the L.A. Times? Also, maybe it doesn't count all the part-timers, temporaries, and per-diems. Still doesn't reconcile these figures with my extensive observations. There's nothing about age, so the top-halfers could be old holdouts from another era -- pending replacement with the much lower-paid.

I see that the info comes from employers, but can't find whether it's based on voluntary surveys, or tax returns. If it's voluntary I give it no faith.

Re computer programming, my observation has been that it's often high-paid but very unstable. It's very hard to find a full-time permanent job, even hourly with no benefits. I know a number of guys in Silicon Valley who have to constantly scramble from one temp gig to another. Another example of where personal, anecdotal information can be much more useful than a national mean.

My god, you graduated in the top 10 percent of an accredited law school and didn't get a single decent law firm offer? That's the worst story I've heard yet.

I realize I thought "mean" meant what "median" means, rather than the average. Slap an "L" on my forehead (for liberal arts). Since the government data give us the mean, it's easy to see how results are skewed, especially in "winner-takes-all" professions like fashion design.

[Russ]

I think these statistics might reflect the difference between jobs you can only get through networking and jobs you can get through advertising. I've done both kinds of job searches and the salaries for the networking jobs have always been significantly higher.

If a job has a recommendation-only policy, the employees are not liable to brag about their incomes for fear of a flurry of resumes being dropped on the bosses desk that would encourage him to drop that policy and increase the potential supply of labor (and thus reduce the price).

Therefore, anecdotal evidence fails to provide any insight into whether these statistics are real.

The lawyer salary looks allright to me. It's the average lawyer's salary not the average lawyer's starting salary.

First, 20% of all law school grads never take or pass the bar (usually the bottom of the class) so they can never call themselves lawyers and skew the average.

Second, a large proportion of law school grads find careers outside of praciticing, human resources, real estate development.

Third, women typically marry men who make more than they do. So all those female law grads are usually in a good position to drop out of the work force when they have kids.

[David]

The official data says that editors make $51,750/year, but an editor responded to my salary taboo post and said he only earns $27,600, half of what the government thinks he’s supposed to make.

The govt. figure is a mean and I'm in the bottom ten percent, partly because, as someone else noted, I'm not in technical publishing.

One factor that inflates the national average is that major publishing centers like New York have average salaries that are double what someone would ever make at a small publisher in a small city.

Another factor is the wide disparity in jobs that have the title "editor", from those in the 24K range that are little more than clerks to those in the 100K range that are essentially corporate executives.

Finally, the biggest factor ignored by the govt. is that much editing work is contracted out, paying $20 - $70 per hour. As with other contract work, the hourly pay, hours per week, and job security fluctuate wildly.

The lesson for all young people and career changers is this: Ignore the BLS, the state employment office, and all your high school and college career counselors. Talk to several people who actually work in the industry you are thinking about.

Professional career counselors are the worst. They are all losers.

[Half Sigma]

David: "The lesson for all young people and career changers is this: Ignore the BLS, the state employment office, and all your high school and college career counselors. Talk to several people who actually work in the industry you are thinking about."

And this is exactly why the salary taboo results in inefficient and unfair labor outcomes. The people the young people talk to probably won't say exactly what they earn, so the young people will have incomplete data.

[David]

I guess that my career advice may fall flat when it comes to accurate salaries, although other factors would be clarified (contract vs. FTE, location, status, etc.). That's where the anonymous posting provides a corrective, I suppose.

Whenever I talk to prospective editors, I give them exactly the salary information I've provided here; but I am more evasive with rival peers.

[bbartlog]

Computer programming pays pretty well and demand is still strong, but as someone else noted there is a lot of churn. And as with law, there's often a strong expectation (if you're salaried) that you work a lot of overtime. It's also not a field where it's easy to make up for lack of smarts by simply working harder or being more conscientious - I wouldn't recommend it as a career path to anyone who isn't in the top 5% intelligencewise.

[michael vassar]

People won't and can't be clear about status. It's vaguer than income and even more taboo. Also, people *in* careers is a very biased sample set.

Look, the real rational thing to do is almost certaintly to *Set up a business that can scale up to a career while one is still a kid, has unlimited time, and has no expenses*. Ditch the whole mainstream racket. Online this is practical, especially if one lives in a city and thus has mobility before age 16. In order to do this one should obviously ditch school.

[kirk]

Other than income, is there any reason to pursue a college degree? Most of the posters here appear to have them, but they seem just as miserable as the blue-collar factory workers I work with every day.

Being a blue-collar drone myself, I've been putting myself through college, hoping for a better life. But after reading these posts, I'm starting to get the impression that though my paycheck might increase after graduation, I'd still be every bit as unhappy as I am now. Plus, I'd have to wear a necktie. Who needs it? (I'm 39, and still don't know how to tie one.)

Also, I'm currently majoring in "technical writing," but I'm a little dubious about that major's utility. What's the point of majoring in something that can be easily outsourced to India?

Honestly, I'm thinking of just dropping out of college, and going to the local auto-tech program. Regardless of the economy, being able to fix cars will always be a useful (and non-outsourcable) skill to have. Also, with rising gas prices, cars will probably become more complex, with diesels and hybrids becoming more and more commonplace. (Diesels are getting piezoelectric injectors, which I think is pretty cool.)

I think I'd be happier with that type of work. Anyone here have any opinions on this?

[SFG]

"I wouldn't recommend it as a career path to anyone who isn't in the top 5% intelligencewise."

How important are personality, etc.? I've got plenty of brains but few other positive attributes.

[spungen]

Michael Vassar, can you give examples of anyone you know who's actually done this? It's a nice idea ...

Kirk, the technical writers I've known are independent contractors or piecework freelancers and usually work from home. No tie involved. No degree in technical writing (usually journalism though, but I don't think that's necessary either). But, no stability or benefits. Generally you have to be in the loop already to get the work. I wouldn't recommend any type of journalism to anyone starting over at 40 looking for stability, even notwithstanding potential foreign outsourcing.

I've found that most writers of any type are pretty critical and moody, regardless of circumstances.

[michael vassar]

SFG: personality etc is probably less important in IT than in any other field. However, specific aptitude for IT is a must, it correlates poorly with g see
http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf and
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf
(see the jobs table on the latter. Large ranges of g in a profession suggest low g correlation.

kirk: College is more fun than work, but is a bad investment. MUCH better to use the money to found a business of some sort. OTOH, happiness studies show that education correlates with many desirable outcomes even controlling for income and IQ.

Spungen: Brad Anderson in my high school, but that was years ago. It should be much easier now. Oh, and a few drug dealers. And Green Test Prep,
http://www.greentestprep.com/
a national company founded by Nick Green with 6 figure profits. He just turned 21.

Spungen

[David]

Kirk, I second the opinion of technical writing as a career. It can be lucrative but will probably involve all the vagaries of self-employment. It would be best to pursue it as a sideline, without seeking formal certification.

Pursuing a technical education will give you more secure income sooner, if you get placed quickly. And, after a while as a mechanic, you may be in demand as a freelance technical writer, provided you already know how to write.

[spungen]

Michael Vassar: I assume you mean Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy. I see he did go to college, at U of Denver. Really, you think it's *easier* now for a kid to start out on the sales floor someplace and work his or her way up to CEO of the corporation? I would think the opposite, that there's a vast, ever-widening gulf between the minions and the masters.

As for Nick Green, I see he got a perfect SAT score and went to Harvard. Clearly a very special case.

I knew a couple guys who got though college selling drugs. None who parlayed it into a lucrative later career though. One guy did co-own a smoke shop in Marin County.

Kirk, David may be onto something with the advice about being an expert mechanic and writing about it. Not too many mechanics have good verbal skills. Look how well the "Car Talk" guys did.

[bbartlog]

Personality unimportant in IT? If you mean you don't have to have a pleasant personality, then yes. On the other hand, if you mean you need to have the right personality type (I'd say NT if you're using the Myer-Briggs scheme) then I'd say it's pretty important.

As for intelligence being unimportant, I'd point out that the paper you linked from Saeed makes that claim in the intro (with no cite to back it up) and then plainly contradicts it later on - see the result on p17.

[SillyValleyProgrammer]

spungen says:

Re computer programming, my observation has been that it's often high-paid but very unstable. It's very hard to find a full-time permanent job, even hourly with no benefits. I know a number of guys in Silicon Valley who have to constantly scramble from one temp gig to another. Another example of where personal, anecdotal information can be much more useful than a national mean.

However, my anecdotal evidence is that I know lots of programmers in Silicon Valley, and they all have permanent jobs and they earn more than $100,000 a year.

Indeed, where I currently work we were looking for good people for a long time and are still looking for a QA person, and in my previous job we were looking for several people for a long time as well.

[SillyValleyProgrammer]

HS, you say:

According to the government data, law school is a no-brainer if you want to make more money. It was this sort of crappy government reporting which probably led me to making the huge mistake of going to law school (as confirmed recently by the Wall Street Journal).

Because of the salary taboo, high school students have only this lousy government data to rely on, and are therefore encouraged to pick seemingly high paying jobs like fashion designers (what girl wouldn’t want to be a fashion designer and make $67,370/year?) which are really bogus fictions, and are turned away from solid careers like computer programming where they can earn a decent living.

It seems to me that you are saying:

Things would be better for everyone if only they had been (or were) better for me

That is, it seems to me that you are trying to get us to adopt a situation that would be good for you by claiming that it will be good for all of us.

However, it seems to me that different people can have different views about whether or not the situation you want to bring about is better for them.

I can well imagine CEOs and others thinking that you are wrong.

In addition, when I was going to college I didn't look at salary data to figure out what I wanted to do. I just did what looked interesting. Perhaps I lucked out, but then I have also been involved with several open source software projects.

Finally, at the end of the day, people also have to look seriously at their abilities. People with IQs less than about 115 are not going to make top notch programmers ...

[spungen]

Hmmm, SillyValley, I wonder why the disparity. Are the guys I know just not going to the right job boards? Maybe there are some degree/credential requirements they don't meet? Like, do you need an engineering degree from a top school? All guys, all white or Asian, all 30 or under. Seem pretty bright and personally presentable to me, but I can't really judge the programming.

[spungen]

Well, SillyValley, I know the guys at issue are at least in the 130-range. For whatever that's worth in the mysterious world of programming.

[SillyValleyProgrammer]

spungen says:

I know the guys at issue are at least in the 130-range. For whatever that's worth in the mysterious world of programming

That is a good range to be in ...

My degree is from a little known college in another country (not India or China).

Perhaps they should try a British or Indian or Chinese accent. I seem to work with lots of such people :-)

[spungen]

Yeah, SillyValley, they're always blaming stuff on India. Maybe I should tell them it would be more productive to get their butts back to college and finish up their degrees (I see you *do* have a degree).

[SillyValleyProgrammer]

spungen says:

Maybe I should tell them it would be more productive to get their butts back to college and finish up their degrees (I see you *do* have a degree).

Yeah, employers are a bit capricious, aren't they. Since they are prevented by the courts from using employment tests[1] they are forced to use proxies like degrees and things.

Of course, I got mine so long ago now that it is almost no use any longer.

[1]They have to show that such tests don't disproportionately reject certain minorities. (Like, not the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans or Indians.) It's all too hard, so an engineering degree or a science degree is typically required :-)

[anonradguy]

hmmmm...my IQ's about 150 and I got a third-rate radiology residency due to a lack of charisma.

Switch careers?

[michael vassar]

spungen: No, I meant a Brad Anderson who I knew in High School who only attended chemistry classes.
I definitely don't think it's easier now to work one's way up. It's easier now to start a business.
Sorry about Nick, but most of the people I know have SAT scores > 1550 at least post renorming. Nick is strongly leaning towards leaving Harvard

Anonradguy: Med school is the one place where the status of the institution doesn't matter much. 3rd rate degree or 1st, you still get an almost equally good MD.

[spungen]

Michael Vassar, you've stumped me. You probably don't mean the guy who directed "The Machinist," or the guy who draws Marmaduke. Wikipedia has failed me.

[Ben]

The IT profession is great for high salaries.