Insofar as people reading it would extrapolate from those numbers to some kind of quality of life / envisioned financial security, out of context I do think the

Insofar as people reading it would extrapolate from those numbers to some kind of quality of life / envisioned financial security, out of context I do think they are meaningless. As the parent said, at least location / cost of living needs to be factored in. That being said, it's probably worth noting for younger folks that ALL of the top fields, in terms of expected compensation, are all STEM fields (mostly engineering). This is coming from one who majored in English, but made the move to the software field, sooo..... maybe eventual field of expertise is more important than "major" anyway. There's nothing to say a particular major locks you into a career path. On the other hand, I probably would have been hard-pressed to transition into something like nuclear engineering.