Average Starting Salaries

Starting Salaries For New Graduates

Many websites provide information on average starting salaries for new graduates based on your degree and field.  You can find information on a starting salary for a teacher, starting salaries for doctors, and average starting salaries for many other professions.  The best way to get information is to research your chosen field to determine what you are worth.  Some popular employment fields include accounting firms, engineering services, consulting services, retail, and petroleum companies.  Over the past few years, the average starting salary has been slowly increasing.  Individuals with marketing and technical degrees are also highly sought after.

Where To Find Average Starting Salary Information

There are many different resources that provide average starting salary information.  Many news magazines and news websites, like CNN, have articles detailing the trends in starting salaries.  Career and job websites like careerbuilders.com and monster.com will offer starting salary information, though how specific within industries they get is uncertain.  Some popular newspapers and magazines that contain average starting salaries include American Demographics, the Economist, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and many more.

Trade and industry magazines will also include average starting salary information.  Information on the national average starting salary for careers in engineering can be found in GECC magazine.  The average starting salary for a teacher in Europe can be found in the European Magazine, also accessible online at cafebabel.com.  Some articles also will include information on training costs compared to starting salaries.

Starting Salary Websites

A great website that provides starting salary information for many fields and even breaks down industries into sectors is payscale.com.  Information for average starting salaries for a teacher is broken down into information for elementary school teachers, high school teachers, middle school teachers, special education teachers, preschool and kindergarten teachers, secondary school teachers, and more.  They also explain trends and advice for those in the field or interested in joining the field.

The website is divided into sections and covers almost all industries.  They have a reports section that provides information on salaries and benefits, whether having additional education is worth the cost, job listings in your area, the cost of living in certain areas and cities, predictions on future career paths, and charts for many companies.  The site also contains a career research center and career planner.

College websites like collegecrunch.com offer starting salary information for many fields.  Though the main focus of the site is not starting salaries, but college life and planning, they do provide information on salaries in different industries such as acting, advertising, aerospace engineer, ambulance drivers, automotive mechanics, bartending, biochemistry, biology, book keeping, brick laying, clinical research, college professor, and real estate just to list a few.  They do not have any of the tools and calculators found in sites that just focus on starting salaries.

Studentsreviews.com is another student site that provides information by major.  It provides information on starting salaries, current salaries, an estimated 10 year salary, job satisfaction depending on your major, unemployment in each field, and those that are still in the field in which they received their degree.  Also included are motivation tools and the average number of years individuals stay in their position in each field.

To find some average starting salary information, you can visit job site boards that are specific to your industry and determine what the current job offers are suggesting.  You can also just do a search in your favorite search engine and see what the national average is and if there is a demand in specific areas for individuals in your field.  Sometimes, geography can play a large part in the type of salary you will receive, as with anything it is all about supply and demand.

Average Starting Salaries For Doctors

The medical field is rather prestigious, but the work and cost that goes into the training is expensive, stressful, and time consuming.  The best websites that provide starting salaries for doctors will also factor in what it takes to become a doctor and will provide more information than just the basic salary.  All doctors tend to make above $100,000, but certain doctors do make more then others and oncologists can make over $200,000 a year.  If you are interesting in becoming a doctor, you should speak with someone in your desired field, as most doctors do not leave school until they are 30; they must complete a highly competitive residency, and the work hours can be stressful and tiring.

Trends For Average Starting Salaries

There are always trends that change or stay the same each year.  Currently, blue-collar work has some quite large starting salaries, as many of these positions require individuals with some specialized skills.  Education is not as important in blue collar, though individuals in management positions will have at least a bachelors if not a master’s degree.  Careers in finance and marketing find that having a masters will increase the starting salary.  Individuals in science need to have a PhD to go to the top of the heap; otherwise, they will probably never advance further than a lab technician or field assistant.  Research in medicine is as popular as ever and requires individuals with higher education.  It is important to determine if higher education will benefit you in the long run, as higher education is beneficial, but only to certain fields.  Other industries will place more value on experience than education depending on the field.

In general, the major trend is that individuals with college degrees have been found to have increasing starting salaries.  With the current change in the economy, it will be interesting to see what occurs with starting salaries and which jobs become popular or still have a high demand.  There is a chance that college students may shy away from the finance industry and instead flood other industries.  It is currently difficult to get large student loans, so students are flooding community colleges, which in turn may cause a change in starting salaries and available work force.  No matter what you are looking for, whether it is to change industries, research salaries for when you leave school, or just see how much you should be making, you can find reliable starting salary information in magazines, newspapers, and on the Internet.