College Crunch

While the starting salaries of various careers continually shift over time, I feel like there hasn’t been much change in careers over the last decade. When finishing school back a decade ago, I entered the work world, and in researching 52 starting salaries, I noticed that many of the salaries my friends and I were earning back in the late nineties are still the starting salaries today.

Nearly everything has increased in price at a rate between two and three percent per year. Have salaries kept up with inflation?

In wondering this, I scoured the Internet for information relating to salaries from a decade ago, and compared them against the salaries of today. Some of the information might surprise you, other tidbits of what I had found may not.

Just to keep up with inflation, salaries should have gone up around twenty-five to thirty percent in the last decade, so keep that in mind when looking over this post.

Here are just a few examples of salaries and how they have shifted over the last ten years.

* please note that all salaries are generalized as US wide, and different areas and experience levels would have earned different wages. This information is just for modeling the changes in average salaries over the last decade.

The first group are salaries that have gone up, but no where near enough to keep up with inflation, many careers had the “average wage” become the starting wage, which seems like a good deal until you realize that adjusted for inflation, those that started a decade ago were earning more than those starting today.

Webmaster

If you were looking for a career as a Webmaster in 1998, you were probably hoping for a salary around $45,000 per year. Though this was the average for the career, today, you’d get $45,000 as a starting wage.

Network Administrator

In the mid to late nineties, you would have been earning an average wage of around $45,000 per year, while today, you would still be looking at an average wage around $42,000 to $54,000. The starting wage has slowly gone up and now an entry level career as a Network Admin will usually earn around $38,000 per year.

Technical Support Technician

Much like the webmaster before it, the average salary from the late nineties has become the starting wage of today. With an average technical support technician earning $32,500 before, and starting at $33,000 today.

Moving on to non-technology focused careers things start to vary wildly, as non-health careers seem to stagnate in growth. Many jobs earning the same, less or in some cases, a bit more, but again, not enough to compensate for the inflation in the economy.

Accountant

A junior accountant might have earned around $30,000 per year in 1998, while today they would earn around $34,000 per year, an increase of only thirteen percent.

Lawyer

In the late nineties a lawyer just starting out could look forward to earning nearly $60,000 per year, while today, that has only grown to around $64,000 per year. This is less than a seven percent increase.

Retail Associate

Working hard in the retail world? Today, the fight for lower prices has strongly effected the wages of those working for the various stores. In the late nineties, you could have earned an average wage of $26,000 while today, you can expect to bring home an average closer to $23,000. A notable decrease in a world where things cost more, year over year.

Chemical Engineer

For those graduating and looking forward to being a chemical engineer, you might be surprised to realize that the salary increases haven’t been very large in that field either with a starting rate around $45,500 in the late nineties, and $50,000 today.

If you are entering the medical field, then you are in luck, as that is where the money seems to be as the need has risen, so has the salaries. Over the last ten years, nurses, doctors, and other medical staff have seen their wages rise far beyond most other careers, with some more than doubling.

Nursing (RN)

In 1998, you would have earned a starting wage of around $33,000 per year, but today, you can expect a wage closer to $49,000 per year. This is an increase of around forty-eight percent, well above inflation during that time period.

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Pharmacist

Dishing out the ever growing number of pills and pharmaceuticals that we all need, a Pharmacist has grown from $50,500 in the late nineties to around $90,000 today a near doubling of their wages as well.

Of course this kind of year over year increase in healthcare won’t happen forever, but out of the various careers I researched, I was surprised to see how flat salary increases have been over the last decade. If people wonder about being in a recession, just look at the comparison between wage growth and inflation, and you’ll realize that people starting in certain careers are making much less than those that started a decade ago.

Has the no-experience starting wage in your job dropped, stayed the same or risen over the last decade?