Civil Engineers Salary Analysis in 2024 PART 3
How experience impacts yearly wages & starting salaries since 2021
Welcome to the final part of this civil engineering salary survey. Â
This final part will investigate the growth in salary over years of experiences and education levels in the United States. Additionally, this post will look at the starting salaries across sub-disciplines from 2021 to 2024.  Â
Just to recap, reddit has salary data information which can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/civilengineering/comments/162thwj/aug_2023_aug_2024_civil_engineering_salary_survey/Â Â
Part 1 explored the top-paying countries for civil engineers and compared salaries across sub-disciplines. Â
Part 2 examined the work hours per week in various states and provinces, job satisfaction across sub-disciplines, and compared salary and parental leave by gender.Â
For this Part 3, only US data will be included in this analysis to keep a uniform currency, and because the US has the highest sample size. Â
1. Salary vs. Years of Experience and Education
The figure below shows a line connected scatter plot with the years of experience on the X-axis and the Annual Salary on the Y-axis. All of the sub-discipline annual salaries were compressed into a mean value.
In general, annual salary does increase with greater years of experience. Still, its difficult to discern how education levels impact salary in the above figure.
The figure below smoothed out the data by mean averaging the years of experience in groups of 5 year increments. This smoothed out the representation of the data, and it’s more clear how education impact annual salary. The sample size is also shown (n=#).
From the above figure, the education level seems to co-relate with an increased starting salary and this wage gap seems to maintain throughout the course of the engineer’s career (on average).
The rate of increase over time on this averaged chart seems to be more or less linear for bachelors and masters degree engineers, and potentially exponential for doctorate level engineers, which speaks to the higher earning possibilities for PhD holders.
There is limited sample sizes for high school diploma level engineers, which makes sense as people generally need at least a bachelor’s degree to become an engineer.
Although these results are generalized, every engineer has a unique career path and annual salaries may be quite variable depending on a multitude of factors not expressed in these numbers.
2. Starting Salary over 2021 to 2024
NOTE: THIS SECTION IS WRONG! I WILL UPDATE SOON!
The past 3 years of survey data was analyzed. The line graph below shows the starting salary across the past three years (between 2021 and 2024). The years of experience between 0 and 2 years was grouped together and the salary was mean-averaged.
Sample sizes for 2021-22 were low so it’s hard to draw firm conclusions based on the salary, but in aggregate, environmental did the best and construction did the worst.
Interestingly, there was no salary survey data in 2021-22 for aviation and bridges.
Looking and the figures below, the % changes year over year to the starting salary data is shown. It should be noted that $1 USD in 2021 is worth approximately $1.16 in 2024. This represents approximately 8% inflation between years (on average), meaning that if salaries did not increase past 8%, then wages for that sub-discipline did not maintain purchasing power.
% Increase/decrease in starting salary from 2021-22 to 2022-23
Construction/Field experienced the highest uptick in salary from 2021-22 to 2022-23. This makes sense in the context of the pandemic lockdowns. As construction began opening up again, demand for field engineers may have caused a boost in starting-salaries. Structural and governmental salaries also increased. Environmental fell dramatically, although the low sample size in 2021 may cause this data to be exaggerating the drop in starting salaries (regression to the mean due to sample outliers).
% Increase/decrease in starting salary from 2022-23 to 2023-24
Government sand structural performed well for starting salary increases between 2022-23 to 2023-24. Observing the median however, construction and aviation represented the highest increases in starting salary. Geotechnical and land development did not rise as much as other sub-discipline between this time period.
OPINION: Another underrated concern with inflation is the deteriorating quality of engineers over time. If there is a gradual slippage in the value of engineering salaries over time, the brightest and most effective humans will opt to pursue more lucrative careers like finance, or technology. Less effective engineers over time will lead to more frequent subpar outputs (or civil infrastructure in this case). This is a shame. Technology has grown rapidly over the past 50 years, to the point where most humans have a mini computer in their pockets, but architecturally, the built-environments in the west hasn’t changed significantly over the same time period. If anything, western infrastructure seems to be more deteriorated now compared to the past. There needs to be inspiration to care about the aesthetics of the built environment if there is to be a resurgence of architecturally epic infrastructure.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my analysis and commentary for this comprehensive salary survey. I want to continue creating more content in this data analysis publication, and pursue more creative opportunities too. If you have any data trends you’d like me to look into please feel free to send me an email at :
pj-pacificvibes@outlook.com
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Oh and here’s a link to my earlier posts on this topic:
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