College Graduates Are Overestimating the Salaries They'll Start Out at By $50,000, Report Finds (cnbc.com) 223
Newly minted graduates are in for a shock. Although the job market and starting salaries for the Class of 2022 look significantly better than last year, they may fall far short of graduates' expectations. From a report: Employers plan to hire about 31% more new degree holders from this year's graduating class than they hired from the Class of 2021, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The increased demand for workers is also driving starting salaries higher for some majors, NACE found. The average starting salary for this year's crop of graduates is projected to be more than $50,000, based on the most recent data. Yet current college students expect to earn twice that -- $103,880 -- in their first job, according to a separate survey of college students pursuing a bachelor's degree by Real Estate Witch in March.
Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
$50K right out of college is fine. You can live in these United States on that. Want more, work and train for it, don't imagine you're going to use the law to be a parasite on someone else's dime.
With no corporations and no billionaires, the USA would look like Haiti.
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$50k might be fine for some careers in some parts of the country, but base salaries vary significantly between professions and some areas have much higher cost of living where $50k would be not enough
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
NYC and LA are not the majority of the country, and everywhere else the commutes from a decent CoLA at 50k are fine.
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A significant portion of the country population-wise (including the tech hubs) have a higher CoL. I don't think people moving to some backwater town in Mississippi are expecting $100k starting salaries, but the engineer in Seattle might.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
No but just LA area and Downstate NY cover roughly 10% of the US population. And there is a high consecration of jobs available with many of them being high profile companies that are very attractive to the young ambitious new grad who wants to make a dent in the job market.
It is really a catch 22.
Companies will go to high populated areas despite the high costs to have a wide hiring pool. Creating more companies and increasing the demand for housing
People will go where there is the highest job chances, despite cost of living. Creating a larger supply of people who demand housing.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
AC blathering nonsense, $50K is fine to live, they can get roommate in expensive cities and work their way up. Gas? in big city? Don't even need a car. Outside the big city, live like king on $50K.
There is no problem, other than stupid college kids imagining they won't have to work their way up like everyone else unless they're prodigy.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Informative)
Also consider that $50k/yr puts you in the top 1% globally [washingtonpost.com]. Everyone complains about the 1%, right up until they learn that they're part of the 1%. In the U.S. $50k/yr puts you into the top 20%. Congratulations, that 4-year degree you're bemoaning put you ahead of 80% of your fellow Americans.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
25 years ago, I made 45K/yr (because of overtime) at an iron foundry in a small town. I was hired immediately because I was taking chem 104 in college at the time. They felt I knew how to go into a lab and measure stuff. Really solid pay, but no room for advancement. That's where a college degree and the sort of professional jobs that implies really out performs in the long run.
Of course, if you can hire educated "professionals" anywhere in the world for pennies on the dollar compared to US and Europe. Then yea, it seems logical that's going to depress wages. Then the difference between having a 4 year liberal arts degree and a welding certificate becomes very small even in the long haul.
With no corporations and no billionaires, the USA would look like Haiti.
Even 90 years ago we knew that trickle-down was an unproven pile of bullshit. Do we have to spend another hundred years debunking this old canard of trickle-down economics?
Humorist Will Rogers jokingly advised in a column in 1932:
This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue.
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Good lord, 80 years and we didn't learn fuck all.
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...mostly how to add... someone fetch me a coffee, dammit!
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It's worse. this idea has been kicked around since the 1890's.
My theory is we have a lot of material from the 1930's because lampooning of political topics rose to a fever pitch as the political divisions in the US grew with the left moving further away from [what was once] center in response to horrid people like Father Charles Coughlin and the position of the right becoming more mainstream with paranoia around immigrants and communism on the rise.
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Good lord, 80 years and we didn't learn fuck all.
On the contrary, somebody learned the lesson very well indeed. You didn't think it was an accident that the current system has been using that excuse for four generations did you? They use it because it works.
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Trickle down is a well understood pejorative for the economic theories of Milton Friedman and others of the Chicago school. People definitely argue for what I am talking about, even based their academic careers or campaign platforms on it.
The problem with Sowell is he fails to identify neo-liberals and third-way center-left and distinguish them from progressives or socialist left. It's a typical failure of those evaluating American politics from the inside.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:4, Insightful)
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$50K right out of college is fine. You can live in these United States on that.
I was making about that in '08, and was living paycheck-to-paycheck with a 30yr mortgage on a $190k house. God forbid you need to buy a car that isn't a beater, your budget will be screwed.
These days, that kind of salary is enough money if you don't mind renting in a slummy part of town and driving a beater.
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I was making about that in '08, and was living paycheck-to-paycheck with a 30yr mortgage on a $190k house. God forbid you need to buy a car that isn't a beater, your budget will be screwed.
Yeah...I dunno about all that. I graduated in 1997, and started out at $38K/Year. I drove a 1991 Isuzu Trooper. I did just fine. Bought a house in 2000 for $160K. It was only 5 miles from work.
Inflation adjusting all that for today....the story would need to read:
I graduated in 2022, and started out at $53K/year. I drive a 2016 Jeep. I'm doing just fine. I will buy a house in 3 years for $223K. I work from home most of the time.
Seems about right.
I think the trick is to not live in ridiculous expensive
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Re:Young people are screwed (Score:4, Interesting)
$50k was a good wage out of college 20 years ago. Where most grads got 35k-40k out of college. But in 2022 A 50k entry tech job, was not unheard of.
However that has been 20 years. I looked up my old Apartment that I lived in after college, the rents of that had doubled sense I was a tenant 20 years ago.
I also didn't live in a high cost area.
While I think the 100+k estimate the students think is high However 65k I would think would be the lower end for a new grad with an average at around $75k
However, your "With no corporations and no billionaires, the USA would look like Haiti." is kinda a gas lighting statement.
Employees at a company will normally bring more value to the company then their expense. While there is a high on-boarding cost for a new employee and even a new grad or an experienced worker. The amount of time it takes someone to get from no experience to experienced to be a good employee usually only takes a few months. So normally there will be a low paid employee who is bringing in much more to the company then what they are paid. This is fine and good... However... If the person gets paid more they will often have less stress at home making them more productive, as well the higher salary makes them more motivated to work harder to earn the pay check. Vs getting paid very little where they are stressed out at home, and see other jobs as a less stress for the same pay.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s not someone elseâ(TM)s dime. Elon Musk is not working 1,000,000 times harder than me. He is the one living off our dimes, not the other way around.
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True. They're about to find out what it means to vote for these things.
When did young people, fresh out of school, have time to cast many well-informed votes to shape the current business landscape?
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
WTF are you talking about the last time the minimum wage was raised was in 2009?
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
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From fuck all to too little to live on?
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Re:Young people are screwed (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us who've been here a while see how it works. Spin people up against the rich so they clamor to implement policies that ultimately make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The only two "recent" progressive eras in the US were in the early 1900's and in the New Deal era. Most likely you aren't old enough to remember either of these from experience (at least not as an adult). Those who research those eras do know how it works, and it leads to decreased inequality and extreme prosperity for an increasing percentage of the population.
Raise the minimum wage, tax billionaires out of the country, shut down all the corporations. There's a direct correlation between cause and effect.
You don't even list the more progressive policies which don't have strong historical precedents for working out well. Having minimum wage keep up with worker productivity and inflation over the past 50 years would have the minimum wage already at around $17.50. We already experienced the prosperity which came in part from increasing minimum wages during the 50's and 60's. Heck, the minimum wage tripled between 1950 and 1963.
We also had an average effective tax rate of 50% for the top 1% of earners in the post-WW2 years, as opposed to just under 30% today. 20% of the total income of the top 1% would be nearly $9 trillion over the next decade. If you think taxing the wealthy is going to have some horrible effect on the economy, we could certainly do a lot worse than going back to the GDP growth of the 50's.
As for shutting down corporations, I don't know where that one comes from. I'm sure you could find progressives advocating for limiting the limited liability corporations give to their executives, but dismantling corporations is not on their agenda. Or maybe you mean trust busting, I'm not really sure there.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
I respectfully disagree. The young people coming up inherit a world with more advanced technology and better healthcare than ever before, especially in countries that have not historically thrived. With a few disgraceful exceptions a there has been a prolonged period of peace and prosperity.
If the next generation can simply maintain the status quo they have a good lifetime of earning and quality of life ahead of them
If they can continue the advances then prosperity and society can become more inclusive and the ills of the world including climate change are all addressable
They can of course shoot themselves in the foot, but the foundation is there for them to prosper.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen an amazing amount of tech come true....from seeing the first PC's on the market to the internet, etc.
I'd not trade it for a youth of today....
It was a much simpler time, less concerns, no real impending social problems...sure, some protests against the Vietnam war, but not all that bad.
People were nicer to each other.
People didn't get mad or go apeshit over the smallest utterance they heard.
And I only had to know 2-3 pronouns.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
>And I only had to know 2-3 pronouns.
And there's the reveal. Its not that the problems didn't exist - you just weren't aware of them.
All the gender-ambivalent people still existed - they just had to hide their suffering at being crammed into a mold that didn't fit in order to avoid persecution, rather than demanding the same level of recognition and respect that everyone else got as a matter of course.
AGW has been recognized as an impending problem for 100+ years, and by the 60s we had a pretty good idea about how bad it was likely to be. It just didn't get much publicity. Probably because fixing the problem would require immediate efforts for benefits that nobody then alive would likely survive to see.
Etc.,etc.,etc.
It's not that our problems today are significantly worse - it's that we're finally acknowledging them rather than sweeping them all under the rug for some future generation to deal with. And as a result we're stuck trying to clean up the messes from several generations prior - while in their old age they're still fighting any reforms kicking and screaming.
The one new(ish) big problem today's youth are actually facing is the return of the Robber Barons, which the last few generations allowed to quietly return to power after their last beat-down.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Informative)
Post above is only being modded "troll" because mods don't like what it has to say, not because it is a troll.
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You clearly have not been in a grocery store in the past three years.
student loans need caps (Score:2)
student loans need caps.
Maybe like max % of income (over an base say poverty line +X) for XX years and then they go away with no tax and no need to pay the rest.
or
student loans no interest / interest capped very low.
Allow chapter 11 and 7 on them so that banks can crack down on the schools to do better / cut costs.
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Why would anyone loan somebody money that they knew was unlikely to be repaid?
Granted, that would have a welcome chilling effect on students going into debt pursuing useless degrees, but doesn't address the deeper problem.
Fortunately there's another option with a wonderful track record of success in most the rest of the world: actually *encourage* people to improve the quality of nation's workforce through education. By making higher education cheap or free, and even providing living subsidies for active
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
The young people coming up inherit a world with more advanced technology and better healthcare than ever before
Everything I have read about happiness and life satisfaction disagrees with the notion that improved technology and economic growth over generations leads to improved quality of life. We are not robots, and do not measure the quality of our life based on whether our cellphones are more powerful than our parent's desktops.
I list the World Happiness Report criteria and questions to determine the happiness of a society below. GDP and healthy life expectancy are included, but they aren't enough to make a fulfilled life.
When they ask someone "Are you worried most of the day", it isn't relevant whether those worries are justified by some objective metric. Just being worried is enough. If our children's lives are full of worry, uncertainty, limited options, etc, they are screwed regardless of whether they have retinal implants to watch TV.
World Happiness Report criteria
1. GDP (PPP)
2. Healthy Life Expectancy (includes morbidity as well as mortality)
3. If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?
4. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?
5. Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?
6. Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country or not?
7. Is corruption widespread within businesses in this country or not?
8. Did you experience the following feelings (laughter, enjoyment, doing or learning something interesting) during a lot of the day yesterday?
8. Did you experience the following feelings (worry, sadness, anger) during a lot of the day yesterday?
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You're obviously not talking about the US, what country are you talking about?
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We will still be 10 years away from complete ecological collapse in 2050. This is how doomsday cults work.
Who knows precisely how far away we are? All we know for sure is that AGW is already causing impact, and the severity of impact is only expected to increase over that timescale. And if THEY punt as well by maintaining the status quo, then it will get worse even faster.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
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what nonsense. You can live fine on $50K a year. Make a budget, live within your means. Stop buying toys and fashion, you wasters.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
The average starting salary for this year's crop of graduates is projected to be more than $50,000, based on the most recent data. Yet current college students expect to earn twice that -- $103,880 -- in their first job, according to a separate survey of college students pursuing a bachelor's degree by Real Estate Witch in March.
Let's not forget these are the same folks that want/expect/demand that government cancel/forgive $10,000, $50,000, or all their student debt because, well, just because.
First job out of school, live with your parents until you save up enough money to get an apartment, and consider getting a room mate also, to share expenses. Merely graduating from a four-year institution does not entitle one to a six-figure paycheck.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
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Merely graduating from a four-year institution does not entitle one to a six-figure paycheck.
Did you consider that they've been lied to by those institutions about what to expect? So that they could charge huge amounts for a degree that isn't actually worth that much on the market?
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who fully paid back over six figures of student debt (and didn't receive or expect any forgiveness), I'd submit that the reason for student loan forgiveness is not "just because."
The issue is that the cost was inflated by the loan system in the first place. The uncapped "Plus" loans meant that colleges could charge literally anything they wanted, resulting to a spending arms race. Most students didn't ask for fancier facilities or more administrators, but that's what they got because their schools got injected with a ton of money. They paid for them whether they wanted to or not. They went to college because it became a social imperative. On top of all that non-loan funding to universities was steadily cut starting in the 1990s. Schools like Berkeley went from having nominal tuition in the 1960s to tens of thousands a year. By contrast, when the Boomer generation was coming up, they essentially received "pre forgiveness" in the form of loans they never had to take because their schools were subsidized on the front end.
But the problem with college loan forgiveness is it does nothing to fix the underlying problem. The whole educational finance system needs to be restructured so it no longer rewards cost inflation.
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
And "forgiveness" is a poor word to describe what's being proposed with student loans. The debt you incurred is forgiven only from your viewpoint. From a systemic viewpoint, the money was already received and used to pay for something (tuition), so the money has already been added to the system. What's really being proposed is debt transference. Student debt will be transferred away from the student, either to the loan underwriter (so the banks, mutual funds, etc. end up paying for it), or to the general population. Your loan is not being forgiven; you're asking someone else to repay it for you.
We can debate whether or not that sort of debt transference is warranted. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's as simple as zeroing out a cell in a spreadsheet and the debt simply vanishes. Once the funds from a loan have been disbursed, the money has to be repaid by productivity to balance things out. e.g. The education you received increases your productivity enough to repay the loan. If we decide to wipe out that loan debt without repayment in productivity, that's equivalent to saying the additional productivity generated by your education was less than the amount loaned to you. Meaning the money added to the system exceeds the additional productivity that was generated. And any time that happens, the currency devalues - you get inflation. The "forgiven" student loan debt then ends up being paid for by all Americans (actually by anyone holding dollars) by slightly decreasing the value of their savings and money in their wallets (and creditors of debt instruments repayable in fixed dollars). Increasing productivity is key, otherwise we could just sit around repeatedly loaning money to each other and forgiving it until we had everything we ever wanted.
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not the bay area or other high cost city's.
And 50K year is crap pay in some citys.
Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
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Re: Young people are screwed (Score:2)
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Easily.
Ok, I don't live in the US, where I live you actually can live on 20k if you have to, 50k make you live like a king and considering my salary I'm the fucking emperor of the world.
But that is my little corner of the world. Salaries mean jack if you don't compare them to the living costs.
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Anyone without debt can live off 50K. But they are not without debt. They literally can't live within their means, even if they spend all their money just on the necessities and paying off the debt.
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$50k, hmm?
Let's just do some calculations here.
First, you aren't taking home all of that $50k. The taxman gets a sizable chunk, and for $50k per year, you are actually only bringing in a bit more than $38k.
Rent runs about $1800/month, which is nearly $22k per year. Food is going to be about 250/month, and utilities another 250, so that's another $6k/year right there. Student loan repayments are going to be another $3k per year (the banks will probably want more, but you can probably negotiate to
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It isn't whether you can live somewhere for $50k - it is whether that is a reasonable pay level in 2022. With a Comp Sci BS my first job out of college (not in a big city) was just shy of that $50k mark in 2000. That was not even high for my class and I had higher offers I turned down for various reasons back then. Adjusted for inflation that would be around $80k.
Why do you feel like someone should have to live with their parents or have to get a bunch of roommates to make it by after earning a college degr
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I graduated straight into the dot com crash. They'll have it easier than I did, and I survived.
What I want to know is how will they do having basically lost two whole years of education.
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We were told in the 80s that ours (Gen X) would be the first to be worse off than our parents. I guess nobody predicted the internet. Now millenials and GenZ'ers are getting told that. Of course we had troubles and shit and who knows what the future holds, but thus far my friends and I turned out OK. Gen X is doing OK, last I checked.
Gen Z'ers have a lot of great advances coming their way that will improve their quality of life, as long as they don't allow shit to fuck that up. Automation has the potential
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Yeah, because the US fared SO well by removing any and all corporate regulation while, hell, look at socialist Europe, how they're suffering from their encroaching governments!
Re:Young people are screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is not "government". The problem is YOUR government, and therefore the people who vote for your system.
You could easily afford to make university free, as the US has a much larger economy than any other country with free universities, but you let the rich talk you out of it.
lucky ducks (Score:3)
My starting salary in IT back in 1991 was $24,500 - not enough to cover rent, food, gas, electric, and parking fees. My peers started out earning $10k more than I did. This fucked me for the next decade, making it much more difficult to obtain a $50k/year salary.
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That depended on where you were. My late wife and I were each making around $27k that year, and could afford to move from our immobile home to a rental house in town, not far from work.
Austin, TX.
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That was over 30 years ago.
Today McDonalds pays $15/hr in certain job markets, and if you stayed with McD for four years instead of borrowing money to go to college, you could easily become a salaried shift manager with full benefits while your buddies are starting to pay back their student debt, and you'd be on track to manage a McD before too long.
Re: lucky ducks (Score:3)
Are you trying to make an argument for going to college?
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Do you understand what inflation is? You were making $52k per year in 2022 dollars.
Go to college for an education (Score:2)
One thing college should teach is how to balance money. This does not mean that credit card debt will not be an issue, but that maybe one canâ(TM)t afford to live in San Francisco or Austin. If the paycheck is small.
Re:Go to college for an education (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing college should teach is how to balance money.
On WHAT planet is college priced at a value? When I left college, my locked loan "low" interest rates were 2-6% higher than my credit cards that I managed to lock to a permanent low rate.
Colleges were putting people in BAD 3rd party loans to 'help'. Now there's no opportunity in credit to lock credit for the life of loan on credit cards to help dig out.
There are people out there with 15+ years of college loans that aren't eligible for any kind of reduction because they "took the deal" of matching payments to income . . . and these people have credit card debt not to get a new TV but to keep a car on the road that they need for a job and food. Food.
SOME of us are carrying and trying to 'right' a legacy of debt and care for an elder family member . . . college is SUCH a bad deal.
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The charges for school are arbitrary. I remember reading the financial page on a local preeminent Christian school and they were very blatant about the tuition and fees, which ha
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At the least I can understand people's resistance to loan forgiveness, how about the government put a cap on interest!
They're not overestimating, they're being lied to (Score:5, Interesting)
So you graduate with a degree in an industry where the average pay is $120k but you don't actually get one of those jobs. If you're a lawyer you end up as a paralegal. If you're a programmer you end up in IT instead of programming, etc, etc. Doctors didn't have this problem, but as mentioned the mega corps solved that problem by buying up all the hospitals and clinics. You can start your own, but you probably don't have the resources to fight insurance companies. I've lost a few doctors that way when they just couldn't make any money because the insurance companies wouldn't pay them. Eventually you get bought out or go tits up.
We gave too much power to the billionaires. But about 1/3rd of the country worships them. They *want* an authoritarian dictatorship. Like the old quote says, "1/3rd of the country would kill the other 3rd while the last 3rd watches".
If you're in that last 1/3rd, stop watching. After they're done with us, they're coming for you next.
Re:They're not overestimating, they're being lied (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep. Just graph out productivity increases against wage increases and note where the trends radially diverge.
What workers are getting paid has been flat for a very long time, while the 1% has gotten exponentially richer. It's not rocket science to figure out what happened there.
Work for Free (Score:2)
Mislead by Bimodal Salaries? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in law school (late 00s), salaries for new graduates were HIGHLY bi-modal (they still are, as far as I know). About 10% of all law school graduates joined large law firms that paid $160k to start (it was a pretty fixed "market" rate). If you did not get one of those large law firm jobs, you worked for the government, which paid about $65k to start (federal), or $45k to start (local), or a small firm (all over the place, but not much more than government).
Quite a few graduates came to law school thinking they were a lock for one of those $160k jobs. Many law schools that might have only sent 5% of their graduates into such jobs were advertising $160k as the "median private sector salary" (not mentioning that the number was based on a survey of a very small number of graduates). Then the great recession happened, and even people who used to be in good shape to get one of those jobs ended up in the bottom mode, or worse completely unemployed.
Anyhow, I'm guessing a lot of those graduates who think they are going to make six figures to start are looking at what new graduates at tech giants are getting, not realizing that those salaries represent the top of the market for the most sought after new graduates.
Lied to for life (Score:4, Interesting)
Expectations from where? (Score:3)
When I entered college in 1997 our C.S. department was graduating twelve people a year. One in the last batch had secured a $70,000 starting salary and the department head couldn't stop talking about it. "If our graduates can demand $70,000 now, just imagine what that number will be in four years!" Fast forward four years and I had graduated, the dot com bubble had already burst, and September 11th was about to make life tougher on just about everyone. After thirteen months of trying to secure a programming position, I finally lowered the bar on what I was applying for and took an IT job (primarily doing what I did my senior year of high school) for $36,500.
So, just where are these young adults getting these expectations from?
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So, just where are these young adults getting these expectations from?
From doing the math on what it takes to live a life like their parents and grandparents lived.
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So, just where are these young adults getting these expectations from?
From doing the math on what it takes to live a life like their parents and grandparents lived.
In my anecdotal experience, my parents lived more frugally than I, and I lived more frugally than my kids. From what I've seen and know about changes in median house size, appliances, gadgets, work conditions, etc., I'd say their expectations are based on the end result of a lifetime of hard work, not the actuality of the beginning of that road.
Suck it up for a year. (Score:3)
You should be compensated for your capability and productivity, not your title. But those things are unknown. Coming out of university or college, you are completely "unproven". In technical fields, remember that someone is gambling on you. If a guy comes out of a trade school in carpentry, I can at least assume they can use most of the basic tools. I can't make the same assumption in fields like software development (for instance).
Give it a year, and eat more ramen than you intend to later on. Prove yourself. If you're clearly worth more you can talk to your employer, or look elsewhere with some newly minted context.
What the fuck do you think? (Score:4, Interesting)
...when BBC is posting (fairly often) articles like this about interns making $8k/mo?
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/a... [bbc.com]
"For many workers, an internship means doing menial tasks like restocking office supplies for minimum wage. But for others, it means making more than $8,000 (£6,400) a month at companies such as Uber and Amazon."
What are college grads supposed to think? They're just barely not-children coming out of 'big kids kindergarten' where they are inculcated into listening, absorbing, and rarely questioning their sources of authority for what, the last 16 years?
They know nearly nothing about real job markets, real salaries, and frankly, real life.
I find it insidious that there is a HUGE industry out there that seems to be dedicated to driving envy as the prime emotion into every young mind.
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I know you didn't reply to this to get a long reply, but I just wanted to try to share what was a 'lightbulb' moment for me about envy.
(Note: Despite the context, this is NOT a camouflaged religious post.)
I'm not a religious guy, so the bible to me was always mainly to be valued as a historical text, some written-down oral wisdom from ancient ages of mankind etc. Particularly the commandments, they seemed wildly inconsistent: I can get the 'don't steal or kill' but 'coveting'...seriously? I'm not even sup
The sites posting salaries for majors are BS (Score:3)
It's a symptom of narcissim (Score:2)
They've all grown up believing that they are all that and a bag of chips. Very few of them are actually capable of doing anything yet they expect the corner office on day one, to be put in charge of a major project, and six weeks vacation.
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth! (Score:2)
There's got to be a re-assessment of what the "buying power" is that you'll get, fresh out of college.
Anyone expecting 6 figure salaries as a first career job should really step back and re-think that idea. It's not unattainable at all, assuming the right career choice. But as a general expectation? No way.
Right now, I know there are long haul truck drivers getting 6 figure incomes, but pretty much none of them receive that in their first year of driving. It's something earned over time, with some real work
consider some numbers (Score:5, Informative)
From the study:
"Journalism, Humanities Students Have the Most Unrealistic Salary Expectations"
Communications/Journalism: 107,040/44,800 ~= 2.4
Humanities/Liberal Arts: 105,790/46,500 ~= 2.3
But others are almost as crazy:
Finance/Accounting: 111,240/59,200 ~= 1.9
The ones who were closest to reality?
Computer Science: 95,690/75,100 ~= 1.3
Of course, all studies are BS, since they probably only surveyed a small number.
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Colleges overpromise salaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Say it like it is.
Colleges sucker in students (no, let's call a spade a spade: customers) by showing inflated rates that you may (may) earn if you're a one in a million talent, get signed up by a company that wants to and can pay one in a million talents and if you're fucking lucky.
I'm in IT security. Yes, with my 15+ years of experience and some other backgrounds on the side that are wanted (or rather, hunted down), I can set my salary to whatever I like and I'll get it. The same is NOT true if you graduate today. Security graduates are a dime a dozen. I'm not exaggerating. It's like MBA in the 80s and law in the 90s. It's promised as the hot get-rich-quick ticket, because you get to see the ones that actually do just that, they get signed up by the big security houses and get thrown money at 'til they can't say stop anymore because they're drowning in greenbacks. So EVERYONE and their dog jumps on the bandwaggon. Whether they have any kind of interest in security or think mimikatz is some German lolcat portal.
4 years later, some of these people will somehow graduate. Expecting now that the world is waiting for them, with 6-figure salaries and the red carpet where the CEO throws petals down in front of their feet so they may grace the company with their illustrious presence. The brutal reality is, though, they're stuffed into SOCs.
A SOC (security operations center) is basically the security equivalent of helpdesk. Long hours, shift work, grueling stress. And of course crappy pay. 30k, maybe 40k. If that. Because you're competing for that slot with people who were suckered into "security bootcamps", because the industry needs SOC drones. And they need to be cheap, and we need lots of them because turnover and burnout rates are high. Few survive more than a year or two. But that's a problem all by itself, and I digress.
The few that actually make it are the ones that enjoy security. The ones that do it in their spare time, get certificates, have their own github pages where they develop exploits and retrace the work of others. These are the 6-figure salaried people.
The rest will eventually throw in the towel and try to go somewhere else with their degree.
And I doubt it's any different anywhere else.
Debt forgiveness (Score:2)
So this goes well with the $50K debt cancellation.
Depends on the degree (Score:2)
I wonder what the standard deviation is on that number. Arithmetic mean only tells you so much.
You salary will reflect market conditions.
100k starting salary for engineering? - sure
100k starting salary for film studies? - don't get your hopes up
Note: my starting salary in engineering, way back in the 90's was $45k and that was in a po-dunk market (not Silicon Valley).
Why so far off? (Score:2)
I'm astounded by this result. When I was a lad in the vastly pre-Interwebs days, typical salary information was widely available. It's got to be trivial to find today. How can an always-connected generation not have a rough idea of this?
I'd also be curious how this breaks out by field. I'd love to know if some fields (e.g. engineering) expect higher salaries than liberal arts students. Or do they both expect the same? If they have different expectations, in which fields do those expectations more closely ma
Lied to, Not Mistaken (Score:2)
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You know..there are a LOT of cheaper, nicer, friendlier place to live than Seattle.
And in most places outside of there, you don't have to worry about stepping on needles, stepping over home
Re:Cost of living (Score:5, Insightful)
You know..there are a LOT of cheaper, nicer, friendlier place to live than Seattle. And in most places outside of there, you don't have to worry about stepping on needles, stepping over homeless on the streets or stepping in their poop on the street.
I live in Seattle, 9 blocks from CHOP, and have lived on Capitol Hill for 12 years on and off since 2002. As someone with first-hand experience -- no one here has to worry about stepping on needless, homeless or poop. I don't know why your perception is so different from the reality I observe. (Maybe you're talking about downtown rather than the CHOP area? I don't have much reason to visit downtown, so don't have much first-hand experience there.)
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Not really...one quick YouTube search found a couple of videos about the Seatle homeless problem:
Here [youtube.com]
Here [youtube.com]
Here [youtube.com]
And here...a local news documentary [youtube.com]
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You know..there are a LOT of cheaper, nicer, friendlier place to live than Seattle.
And in most places outside of there, you don't have to worry about stepping on needles, stepping over homeless on the streets or stepping in their poop on the street.
But, but ... something about lack of good clubs, and hicks, and miscellaneous political ranting!
Seriously though, let them stay there. They would just bring their ways with them ...
Re:Cost of living (Score:5, Informative)
People earning $50K are not paying 1/3rd of their income in taxes, unless they choose to live in a state/city with abusive local income taxes, but doing so is a personal choice, there are plenty of places to live/work that don't feel entitled to a huge portion of your wages.
A person earning $50K in state income tax free Washington state pays about 9% in federal taxes ( https://www.forbes.com/advisor... [forbes.com] ) and about 13-14% in Seattle income taxes ( https://www.francis-company.co... [francis-company.com] ). Of course, if you go to income tax free Texas (Austin, let's say), you get to keep that 14% you were paying to Seattle.
These are life-changing decisions that sadly too few people take seriously.
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"Low tax" states like Texas aren't so low as they appear. You don't pay income taxes, but property and sales taxes are comparatively high. While a renter doesn't pay property tax directly, it is hidden in their rent because the landlord has to pay such taxes. It tends to be a wash for an average $50k/yr income earner. Only high income earners, who can save a significant portion of their income end up with much lower taxes.
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You lose about 1/3rd of that to taxes. Then here in Seattle, a 1bd apartment will run you about $20k/yr.
You don't pay that much taxes when you make $50k per year. A single filer in Seattle (your example) is going to pay about 16% of that in income taxes. There is no Washington state income tax, so you will pocket about $42k (minus deductions like health insurance). The salary of a recent grad in Seattle is going to be higher than the national average, but their cost-of-living adjusted median wage is closer to $48k. And a quick google search found plenty of studio apartments in Seattle for closer to $12k per y
Re:Yikes. (Score:4, Informative)
Prior to the last 1 1/2 years food was cheap. Eating out all the time wasn't, but a slow cooker and rice cooker are maybe 60 bucks to get both, another 70 bucks for a decent mobile induction single burner, and $100 bucks for an air fryer. With those things you technically don't even need to run a stovetop oven in order to meet all your food heating needs. Oh, you meant having other people cook all your meals is expensive. No shit sherlock.