The other thing that is usually left out of the average salary statistics is the small business owner(s) who don't have any employees. I've had plenty of friends say my pay is a bit too high to be realistic for the work that I do, until I present them with my tax filings for myself and my company. 50/50 share with no other employees nets good pay, and it's easy to pay taxes on temp. labor than to pay for Worker's Comp, let alone a full-time employee.Rather unscientific obviously but I went through this thread and tabulated peoples responses. Overall from the numbers I don't get the impression some were giving that people are lying and exaggerating their income because it's the internet. There may be a little of that but based on the fields that people are in the average salaries are not far off from those fields. Two fields dominate the list and that is IT and Government so the fact that the results skew higher than the national average pay doesn't seem to be a dis-qualifier.
Stats:
Average Pay: $69,208 (national average in 2011 $42,979.61 a difference of $26,228.39)
So kind of far off from the average, but since we aren't dummies let's consider factors that we know to be true. This forum is overwhelmingly male. The national average includes woman who suck at making money. The national average for men is $47,127 (a difference of $22,081), but we are also a very white group $51,861 (a difference of $17,347), who are mostly college educated $56,700 (difference of $12,508)
Industry Breakdown:
When compared to national averages we are not far off from national averages for the different sectors other than IT which comes in at 22% on the forum but only 3% nationally.
The top categories of Finance, Medical, Professional Services, Government and IT all have pretty high average salaries according to the BLS
So other than people who apparently have their e-peen hurt by people predominately making middle class salaries. This thread is at least a fair representation of earning power of the various fields. I'm sure there is selection bias causing us not to hear from the lower paid fields. The people responding that they are in retail or a service trade is very low despite those being major employers in our economy.
Take it for what you will just thought some people might be interested and I was bored.
Interesting stuff, however.
edit: I I should've noted that, in order for my statement to make any sort of fucking sense, it's related to taxable income being higher when you can write off 90% of everything you buy. I somehow managed to forget to put that in there. ;-;
There is a lot more to it of course, and mainly I deal just in the linux/vmware world. But I did support Windows for a few years.
