8 ms·

Interactive exploration of earnings by age and industry (2018)

102 points by kolz13 7y ago

brootstrap 7y ago
Interesting to look thru, not sure I totally trust it. I live in central Illinois in farm country and every farmer i know is quite wealthy. They have a healthy lineage, grandpa, dad, son (and also grandma, mom, daughter). The work is passed on thru the family and young folks are walking into millions.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Farmer != farm worker. The farmer owns land, which is an extremely valuable asset that can both be borrowed against and provides serious tax benefits. When the farm worker is under paid, the farmer is the one that reaps the profits.
- axlee 7y ago
  The farmers that you're talking about are not "farmers", they're heirs. Their parent's capital is what make them wealthy now, not their jobs. Transfer them to the same job without the capital, and suddenly they're in the "dead-end".
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
This analysis really under-plays how thin and blurry the line between "dead end job" and "blue collar career" is early on one's career. Driving a tow truck for someone else is a dead end job. You only need like $5k to get your first tow truck though and owning a fleet of tow trucks is not a dead end job. If you have that drive to move up then you can easily start moving up.
- dalore 7y ago
  So you drive a "dead end job" (your words) just to get enough to buy more trucks, making other people work for you in dead end jobs. Are you providing jobs or part of the problem?
  - noxToken 7y ago
    This is a little short sighted. Small businesses only have so much room for expansion. In the same way that the person from GP's comment got their own truck, an employee could also save for their truck. My first programming job was a part time position for a small group of programmers. There weren't more than 8 of us. Without taking on more clients or raising prices, there wasn't really a feasible way to get me to full-time. To get more clients also means that there are also more employees needed. We were all fine with the arrangement. Their whole rationale was to get students a position for hands on experience completing actual projects for clients. You were welcome to stay on after graduation, but the expectation was that you'd leverage the experience on your resume to get a better paying job that was full-time. This fits the bill for the blurred line between dead end job and skilled labor. If I didn't leave (and they were alright with it), my room for growth would have been small barring the owners landing some huge contract that rapidly expanded their business.
  - diN0bot 7y ago
    When you raise venture funding based on exploiting your workforce, then you're creating the problem.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Or “allowing others to get their start without the need to buy a truck and business first”. Tow trucks might be available for $5K down, but the full sticker is $50K+ for a stinger and $100K+ for a rollback. Add a towing/impound license, insurance, land on top of that and it’s reasonable to conclude that some people would be better off driving for someone else than forcing everyone who wanted to be a tow truck driver to open a towing business.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Nobody is starting a business with a new truck and a shop and an impound lot. They are starting with a 2001 F350 rollback with 400k on it and making a buck hauling anything and anything they can. They are parking it in their own driveway and doing roadside calls at 1am and moving machinery on the side. Then they eventually build that into the kind of business you've described. Starting off in blue collar trades is very much a "fake it 'til you make it" deal.
lelima 7y ago
I can't believe that lawyers are such an outlier, I though it was very close to engineering. That's an average, I wonder the mean, maybe there are many lawyer whales pushing up the numbers.
- doytch 7y ago
  Yup. Talked to several of my lawyer friends and they always say lawyer salaries are a bimodal distribution. There's an initial peak for all the regular run-of-the-mill lawyers that toil away doing most of the work, and there are a small subset that make absolute _bank_. So essentially, there's not as many lawyers making the mean salary as you would expect compared to a job like software developer.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    So what's missing is the same charts showing median instead of mean.
  - paultopia 7y ago
    This is correct. (Source: me, law prof.) Lots of lawyers sling wills, work for legal aid or government, etc. and don't make very much at all---probably centering around 50k. OR you could make partner at Skadden and hit 7 figures easy.
- colordrops 7y ago
  I live in LA and have had a chance to meet many people that live in the amazing houses littering the hills. My estimation is that more than half have been lawyers.
- Itaxpica 7y ago
  Pretty much. It's kind of like tech, in which you can more or less break employers in to FAANG, non-FAANG, and small consulting shops. The big white-shoe firms (the legal equivalent of FAANG) pay enormous salaries to even their junior associates (a first-year associate's salary is almost 200k at this point), but the gap between them and the equivalent of non-FAANG companies is way, way higher than it is for tech. Like in tech, independents have a pretty wide distribution, but the ceiling is a lot higher than it is in tech for a very small number of extremely elite lawyers in niche fields.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
It's sobering to see that most of my peers are already in the $140k+ bucket at a minimum out of undergrad, which is where the legal professionals end up after 40!
- theandrewbailey 7y ago
  Is that in the Bay Area (or other high cost of living region)?
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    No, NYC, Boston, Seattle and Chicago.
    - Ancalagon 7y ago
      So other high COL regions...
Loughla 7y ago
I can finally flex on all the farmers, mechanics, and line-welders around here by proving that I'm blue collar by working in education. Not sure that really is as satisfying as I think it will be.
- purplezooey 7y ago
  yeah that one seemed off.
fromthestart 7y ago
>It’s a vicious cycle that appears to only be solvable by workers taking initiative and pushing for more responsibilities, taking advantage of opportunities to educate themselves, and gain new skills to make them more valuable in the field Article really glosses over the fact that there aren't really all that many skills to be learned at most low paying dead end jobs. That's why they're unskilled, require no education, and pay poorly, as there's always a glut of people willing and able to do them. Supply and demand.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  No, that's the article's key conclusion. Read to the end next time.
cosmosa 7y ago
I liked their presentation of the data. Cool interactivity and scrolling transition with notes beside the plots.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  I had the exact opposite reaction. The experience stunk on my phone.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
That was a surprisingly interesting read. I think taking it to the next level would be interesting as well. Things I would like to know specifically toward "life plans" kinds of advice. How many people are in a "dead end" job to make money while still in college? What areas and colleges can you pay all of your tuition, books, and fees while working in one of these jobs? What can you do in high school to minimize the time spent at the 'dead end job' level? What percentage of 'dead end' job employees are the second breadwinner in a household? What percentage are the primary? And finally what percentage are the only breadwinner in the household? What characterizes "good mobility" (moving from one job to a better job) versus "bad mobility" (being unable to change jobs) and what public policies would encourage for more mobility?
- diN0bot 7y ago
  A sci fi bookstore cafe in San Francisco recently closed and cited the loss of service workers as a primary cause. When they started 10 years ago they employed at least half high schoolers... now they can't find any. I wonder if that is because of demographic changes in San Francisco, or because high schoolers have better opportunities now. Such as internships at the science museum or STEM companies. Or maybe there are other cafes or service jobs high schoolers prefer. Thoughts??
  - germinalphrase 7y ago
    Perhaps high school - and high school related activities - have become more time consuming. Likewise, if San Francisco parents are on average more wealthy than in the past, their children would be less incentivized to work for minimum wage and more incentivized to compete academically (or in related capacities) for fewer, but more fruitful, future opportunities.
ncx2 7y ago
"If a high school grad doesn’t go straight to college, chances are him or her are entering the labor force." This grammar is killing the legitimacy of this article...
- paultopia 7y ago
  Come to think of it, some of their articles also make one RATHER wonder about the credibility of their research methods. This one[1] is my favorite, which purports to describe the college in each state with the best 10-year-out employment rate: https://www.zippia.com/advice/best-colleges-for-jobs/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/best-colleges-for-jobs/ Somehow, I rather doubt that Santa Clara University has better employment outcomes than Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA. Or that Assumption College does better than Harvard or MIT. Or The College of New Jersey than Princeton. And so on. And a quick look at the data sources they cite doesn't reveal the employment data, though I'm only searching very lazily...
PorterDuff 7y ago
Hang on, was there anything in those charts about how many people actually make it to 65 in those professions? Maybe I just missed it.

102 points by kolz13 7y ago

Interesting to look thru, not sure I totally trust it. I live in central Illinois in farm country and every farmer i know is quite wealthy. They have a healthy lineage, grandpa, dad, son (and also grandma, mom, daughter). The work is passed on thru the family and young folks are walking into millions.

village-idiot 7y ago
Farmer != farm worker. The farmer owns land, which is an extremely valuable asset that can both be borrowed against and provides serious tax benefits. When the farm worker is under paid, the farmer is the one that reaps the profits.
axlee 7y ago
The farmers that you're talking about are not "farmers", they're heirs. Their parent's capital is what make them wealthy now, not their jobs. Transfer them to the same job without the capital, and suddenly they're in the "dead-end".

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

This analysis really under-plays how thin and blurry the line between "dead end job" and "blue collar career" is early on one's career. Driving a tow truck for someone else is a dead end job. You only need like $5k to get your first tow truck though and owning a fleet of tow trucks is not a dead end job. If you have that drive to move up then you can easily start moving up.

dalore 7y ago
So you drive a "dead end job" (your words) just to get enough to buy more trucks, making other people work for you in dead end jobs. Are you providing jobs or part of the problem?
- noxToken 7y ago
  This is a little short sighted. Small businesses only have so much room for expansion. In the same way that the person from GP's comment got their own truck, an employee could also save for their truck. My first programming job was a part time position for a small group of programmers. There weren't more than 8 of us. Without taking on more clients or raising prices, there wasn't really a feasible way to get me to full-time. To get more clients also means that there are also more employees needed. We were all fine with the arrangement. Their whole rationale was to get students a position for hands on experience completing actual projects for clients. You were welcome to stay on after graduation, but the expectation was that you'd leverage the experience on your resume to get a better paying job that was full-time. This fits the bill for the blurred line between dead end job and skilled labor. If I didn't leave (and they were alright with it), my room for growth would have been small barring the owners landing some huge contract that rapidly expanded their business.
- diN0bot 7y ago
  When you raise venture funding based on exploiting your workforce, then you're creating the problem.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Or “allowing others to get their start without the need to buy a truck and business first”. Tow trucks might be available for $5K down, but the full sticker is $50K+ for a stinger and $100K+ for a rollback. Add a towing/impound license, insurance, land on top of that and it’s reasonable to conclude that some people would be better off driving for someone else than forcing everyone who wanted to be a tow truck driver to open a towing business.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Nobody is starting a business with a new truck and a shop and an impound lot. They are starting with a 2001 F350 rollback with 400k on it and making a buck hauling anything and anything they can. They are parking it in their own driveway and doing roadside calls at 1am and moving machinery on the side. Then they eventually build that into the kind of business you've described. Starting off in blue collar trades is very much a "fake it 'til you make it" deal.

lelima 7y ago

I can't believe that lawyers are such an outlier, I though it was very close to engineering. That's an average, I wonder the mean, maybe there are many lawyer whales pushing up the numbers.

doytch 7y ago
Yup. Talked to several of my lawyer friends and they always say lawyer salaries are a bimodal distribution. There's an initial peak for all the regular run-of-the-mill lawyers that toil away doing most of the work, and there are a small subset that make absolute _bank_. So essentially, there's not as many lawyers making the mean salary as you would expect compared to a job like software developer.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  So what's missing is the same charts showing median instead of mean.
- paultopia 7y ago
  This is correct. (Source: me, law prof.) Lots of lawyers sling wills, work for legal aid or government, etc. and don't make very much at all---probably centering around 50k. OR you could make partner at Skadden and hit 7 figures easy.
colordrops 7y ago
I live in LA and have had a chance to meet many people that live in the amazing houses littering the hills. My estimation is that more than half have been lawyers.
Itaxpica 7y ago
Pretty much. It's kind of like tech, in which you can more or less break employers in to FAANG, non-FAANG, and small consulting shops. The big white-shoe firms (the legal equivalent of FAANG) pay enormous salaries to even their junior associates (a first-year associate's salary is almost 200k at this point), but the gap between them and the equivalent of non-FAANG companies is way, way higher than it is for tech. Like in tech, independents have a pretty wide distribution, but the ceiling is a lot higher than it is in tech for a very small number of extremely elite lawyers in niche fields.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

It's sobering to see that most of my peers are already in the $140k+ bucket at a minimum out of undergrad, which is where the legal professionals end up after 40!

theandrewbailey 7y ago
Is that in the Bay Area (or other high cost of living region)?
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  No, NYC, Boston, Seattle and Chicago.
  - Ancalagon 7y ago
    So other high COL regions...

Loughla 7y ago

I can finally flex on all the farmers, mechanics, and line-welders around here by proving that I'm blue collar by working in education. Not sure that really is as satisfying as I think it will be.

purplezooey 7y ago
yeah that one seemed off.

fromthestart 7y ago

>It’s a vicious cycle that appears to only be solvable by workers taking initiative and pushing for more responsibilities, taking advantage of opportunities to educate themselves, and gain new skills to make them more valuable in the field Article really glosses over the fact that there aren't really all that many skills to be learned at most low paying dead end jobs. That's why they're unskilled, require no education, and pay poorly, as there's always a glut of people willing and able to do them. Supply and demand.

jimbokun 7y ago
No, that's the article's key conclusion. Read to the end next time.

cosmosa 7y ago

I liked their presentation of the data. Cool interactivity and scrolling transition with notes beside the plots.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
I had the exact opposite reaction. The experience stunk on my phone.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

That was a surprisingly interesting read. I think taking it to the next level would be interesting as well. Things I would like to know specifically toward "life plans" kinds of advice. How many people are in a "dead end" job to make money while still in college? What areas and colleges can you pay all of your tuition, books, and fees while working in one of these jobs? What can you do in high school to minimize the time spent at the 'dead end job' level? What percentage of 'dead end' job employees are the second breadwinner in a household? What percentage are the primary? And finally what percentage are the only breadwinner in the household? What characterizes "good mobility" (moving from one job to a better job) versus "bad mobility" (being unable to change jobs) and what public policies would encourage for more mobility?

diN0bot 7y ago
A sci fi bookstore cafe in San Francisco recently closed and cited the loss of service workers as a primary cause. When they started 10 years ago they employed at least half high schoolers... now they can't find any. I wonder if that is because of demographic changes in San Francisco, or because high schoolers have better opportunities now. Such as internships at the science museum or STEM companies. Or maybe there are other cafes or service jobs high schoolers prefer. Thoughts??
- germinalphrase 7y ago
  Perhaps high school - and high school related activities - have become more time consuming. Likewise, if San Francisco parents are on average more wealthy than in the past, their children would be less incentivized to work for minimum wage and more incentivized to compete academically (or in related capacities) for fewer, but more fruitful, future opportunities.

ncx2 7y ago

"If a high school grad doesn’t go straight to college, chances are him or her are entering the labor force." This grammar is killing the legitimacy of this article...

paultopia 7y ago
Come to think of it, some of their articles also make one RATHER wonder about the credibility of their research methods. This one[1] is my favorite, which purports to describe the college in each state with the best 10-year-out employment rate: https://www.zippia.com/advice/best-colleges-for-jobs/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/best-colleges-for-jobs/ Somehow, I rather doubt that Santa Clara University has better employment outcomes than Stanford, Berkeley, and UCLA. Or that Assumption College does better than Harvard or MIT. Or The College of New Jersey than Princeton. And so on. And a quick look at the data sources they cite doesn't reveal the employment data, though I'm only searching very lazily...

PorterDuff 7y ago

Hang on, was there anything in those charts about how many people actually make it to 65 in those professions? Maybe I just missed it.