Salary Statistics

The best careers available to college graduates mix sufficient salaries with advancement opportunities and potential for personal fulfillment. To find out salary statistics for hundreds of careers, every job seeker needs to look at reliable resources.

Using Salary Statistics For Career Choices

The salary statistics published by government agencies and private employers can be used to choose career paths. The simplest analysis used by job seekers is whether real estate, teacher, and plastic surgeon salaries are worth the initial costs. College students who take out loans or pay for their education want to get the best value for their investments. Experienced professionals looking to make career changes can use salary statistics to determine if increases in median salary are worth tuition costs.

Another method to using salary statistics to make career choices is finding a salary that exceeds minimum financial obligations. For example, a college graduate looking to live in a high-end market like San Francisco or New York City may need to find a job with sufficient salary to pay for housing. The best sources of salary statistics will offer information on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and cost-of-living data necessary to make career decisions.

The final method for choosing careers based on salary is looking at the potential for advancement. The average professional should look for industries with high growth potential over the next decade to increase annual salary. Elementary and secondary school teachers may not have much potential for salary increases because of the limitations of local and state education budgets. Lawyers, plastic surgeons, and athletes have wide salary ranges because of disparities between entry-level and experienced professionals in these fields.

Occupational Employment Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics acts as the reliable touchstone for any professional looking for career information. This federal agency maintains the Occupational Employment Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/OES) website, which supplies salary statistics on hundreds of professional fields. Each section of the Occupational Employment Statistics website includes salary ranges, employment projections, and simple explanations of job requirements.

The volumes of salary statistics published in the Occupational Employment Statistics break through salary projections offered by employers. High school and college students looking to compete in professional athletics may be surprised to find that a professional athlete’s mean salary in 2007 was $82,410 per year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics casts a wide net when describing professional athletes including semi-pros, minor league players, and athletes outside the most discussed leagues who make pedestrian incomes.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics categorizes salary statistics into professional fields to help viewers compare salaries. The May 2007 edition of the Occupational Employment Statistics bulletin indicates that physician and plastic surgeon salaries averaged $184,790 per year. This statistic leaps from the page compared to hygienists, medical assistants, and others in the medical profession who make a fraction of that salary.

PayScale®

For professionals looking to compare salary statistics to cost-of-living figures, PayScale® (http://www.payscale.com) offers the best tools on the Internet. PayScale® users can access a series of calculators including a cost-of-living calculator and a tool to determine where their salaries compare to their peers. This website allows users to save their search results for later review, assisting professionals with long-term career planning.

The cost-of-living calculator asks every user to enter their current and prospective cities and states, job title, and base salary from the start. PayScale® uses this information to determine if a professional’s annual salary is sufficient to meet utility, housing, and transportation costs. In addition to the raw data provided by PayScale®, users can compare their past and future jobs in visual terms with simple bar graphs.

PayScale® offers a salary calculator that gives professional insight into how their salaries compare with low, high, and median figures in their fields. The salary calculator starts with questions about job title, years on the job, and location. The next set of questions asks for clarification on professional responsibilities as well as the user’s educational achievements. The result of the PayScale® salary calculator is a cluster of projected salaries including the user’s annual salary.

Salary.com™

One of the most popular resources for salary statistics among employers and employees is Salary.com™ (http://www.salary.com). The primary tool for analyzing salary statistics is the Salary Wizard™ available from the Salary.com™ main page. Salary Wizard® asks the user to provide a job title and a ZIP code to produce an accurate salary report. Salary.com™ users can determine how their salaries compare with colleagues in different regions and different experience levels.

Business owners can use Salary.com™ to assess how their salary and benefit packages stand up to the competition. CompAnalyst® is available to small business owners and corporate executives who want to assess the true values of their employee compensation packages. The CompAnalyst® is accessible from the main page and allows owners to enter the number of employees, budget information, and other data needed for a full analysis. The results of CompAnalyst® compare the true value of the average salary and benefits package to compensation averages in the industry.

America’s Career Infonet®

America’s Career Infonet® (http://www.acinet.org) offers a plethora of career advice beyond its thousands of pages in salary statistics. This website updates content on resume, interview, and career advancement advice that can be useful when looking at salary statistics. For most professionals, however, America’s Career Infonet® acts as an exhaustive resource for state and national salary statistics.

Users of America’s Career Infonet® can find salary statistics specific to their states using the website’s simple search tool. Each search requires the user’s state, professional field, and job title to bring up the latest salary statistics. Once the search is complete, users can compare state and national salary figures along with employment trends within their chosen professional fields.

An example of the comprehensive statistics offered by America’s Career Infonet® is a simple search for budget analyst salaries. A resident of Alaska will find that the typical budget analyst makes $19.25 per hour, which is lower than the $30.50 per hour national median. Virginia budget analysts find that their $34.77 per hour wages exceeds the national median if they use America’s Career Infonet®.