Unfortunately, there are no statistic for exotic dancers, camgirls, escorts etc.





Unfortunately, there are no statistic for exotic dancers, camgirls, escorts etc.




^I get a blank page at that link?
"Don't piss off a motivated stripper."





^^^ your browser may not auto-zoom. Mouse over to the left edge of the screen and click when the + appears.


The data suffers from survivorship bias in certain professions. The assumption from looking at pay rates is, "if I go into that profession, I can make that income," but it's not as simple as that. For example, it's well known that most real estate brokers don't make it. And people in the computer/tech industries mostly wash out before age 40. For attorneys, many of those who graduate from bottom tier schools won't have jobs. I know a guy from high school who, after graduating from a lower tier law school, briefly worked at a small law firm. When he lost his job, he tried to hang his own shingle. He gave up and now is working in a completely different field (but he's still on the hook for those law school loans).
As for petroleum engineer, that's a cyclical industry. If there's a sharp decline in oil prices (such as due to widespread adoption of solar and electric cars), as had occurred in the 1930s and mid 1980s, then those jobs are toast.
Medical school is notoriously difficult to get into. You need to have the mental ability to memorize a seemingly endless quantity of things. The high incomes of the health care field are due to the strong medical lobby. US doctors make double the income of comparable developed countries in Canada, Germany, UK, etc. One can say physician income has been artificially high for the past many decades. However, with government taking control of more healthcare and the US going broke, how long can the US government keep subsidizing healthcare? Probably in the future those healthcare jobs will be safe, but not as lucrative.
Last edited by 1st_samurai; 06-25-2014 at 10:48 AM.




Maybe that isn't so unfortunate, given the desire by some to evade/avoid paying taxes to a certain degree. Thanks for the link, Mel, interesting reading.
As at least one poster has pointed out, there can be a wide range of scatter throughout several occupations in that someone starting out won't make anywhere near the average pay for the first few - several years in that occupation. This is definitely the case in my main lifetime profession, even though I didn't find the figures for the mean income and the percentiles (25%, 50%, etc) to be too much out of whack. Just a quick check: I interpret the percentile figures to mean the percentage of the given occupation making LESS than where the symbol is. i.e., if the 25% symbol is on the 100K line, then 25% of the people there make less than 100K, 75% make more.
I find the CEO figures to be baffling for many reasons. $178.4K Average CEO pay, ~ $175K median (50% percentile) pay ? I realize that many small business owners are likely included in those statistics. Still, the fact that many F500 CEO's make 6 or 7 figures (maybe even more) per year in total compensation makes me question the accuracy/ computation methodology of the BLS study. IMO, nailing down CEO compensation is like trying to nail Jello to the wall. Maybe BLS only looked at salary. We (at least the more avid DD posters) know that there are additives that can (and do) significantly pump up CEO compensation. A casual perusal of yahoo finance reveals many insider transactions of 6 figures, or more.
Although an imperfect study, this chart might enable main SW demographics to gauge how they're doing compared with other occupations.
Last edited by minnow; 06-29-2014 at 07:17 PM.
I'm right 96% of the time.I don't sweat
the other 5% .......................





^^^ you answered your own question. A few thousand very highly paid Fortune 500 executives wind up being averaged out with a million small business / small corporation owners / CEO's. And you're also correct that non-cash compensation ( like OID stock options ) aren't factored in.
Your interpretation of the symbols is also correct. Where the 90% symbol is concerned, it's position on the income bar reflects the earnings level of the top 10% most highly paid people in the given profession.
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