Edition 55 - Let's talk about salary

Earlier this week, I had a call from a lovely journalist I know asking about graduate salaries, which has brought me back around to a subject I love to hate, which is (of course) the impact of salary on career decisions.

If you're new to Pondering Careers, then welcome, otherwise welcome back!

But before we dive into the money, I just wanted to highlight a couple of other amazing things that are coming up:

Careers Festival

The Careers in Careers Festival is coming up, and it's set to be the party of the year so get your tickets (if you haven't already). We're sponsoring one of the awards, and judging the awards last year with William E. Donald was such a highlight for me, so reach out to Caroline Green (RCDP, MCDI, Assoc. CIPD) if you'd like to get involved.

There are going to be some amazing people there, including Candy Ho (何甜茵) Liane Hambly (she/her) Ladi Mohammed-Chapman?? and Chris Webb so it'll be a great event.

Tackling the Green Transition

Like a lot of us in the careers-space, I've been watching the developments in the transition to green energy/jobs with interest, and this policy report from the EU gives a great overview of what's happening on the ground across a range of sectors.

And I must give credit to Lindsay Purchase and the CERIC team for listing this one if their great weekly report wrapup .

Three Newsletters (other than this one)

It also feels a little like newsletter season is upon us as the Northern Hempisphere returns to school, so here are three I love to see in my inbox/feed:

Janet Colledge 's Career Defender - https://mailchi.mp/c26dcbe0f045/do-you-know-somebody-new-to-careers

Janet's always got a great selection of articles to browse that do a great job of keeping me up to date, with a focus on the UK, but there's lots of practical ideas to take into your own context.

Chris Webb 's The Week in Careers - https://www.dhirubhai.net/newsletters/the-week-in-careers-6967446753788764163/

Chris's newsletter is back and it's my staple Friday night read (look at how exciting I am), and I'm loving the latest editions centred on FutureGazing.

And finally the CareerWise newsletter is a must read - https://careerwise.ceric.ca/

I particularly like the culturally aware and inclusive approach they take, and there's always something I can use to inform my practice.

A Primary Freebie

Michael Healy and the team at myfuture have released a couple of lesson plans for primary schools which are well worth exploring - there are lessons on:

• Personal management
• Work exploration, and
• Career building

Back to the salaries

If you came here because you love a bit of a contentious issue and want to talk about salaries then this is the section of the newsletter for you.

This is/can be a tricky topic, because if you bring salary into the conversation then it tends to anchor everything else, but if you remove it then you feel like you're missing a crucial piece of information.

And this is even more true when working with young people, because (quite rightly) they're concerned about their future and want to make responsible, secure, and strategic choices that will maximise their earning potential.

To be honest, personally I feel like the conversation is starting to shift a little for young people because they're moving away from the idea that money is everything .

Perhaps this is the result of them growing up bombarded with messages telling them that they'll never own a home, and that there's a cost of living crisis they'll be left to tackle, not to mention the fact that the population is aging so there are less of them to cover the costs of an aging population, PLUS they're also likely going to have to clean up the mess we've made of the environment.

Faced with this, I'm seeing some young people who seem to have accepted the way the perceive the world to be, and decided to live the life they want to live unburdened by a need to own a home or raise a family.

Instead they're choosing to buy pets, travel, spend time with friends and enjoy building their careers, without the looming burden of childbearing hanging over their early careers.

Of course, this will cause a policy headache for those left to deal with the impacts, but those concerns shouldn't be something young people think about.

But in Taiwan, where there are more cats and dogs than children under ten , it's clear that simply providing financial incentives isn't enough - salary and earnings alone aren't encouraging young people to start a family, and money isn't everything.

Money isn't everything

The approach I always take when talking about salary is to put it into context. That means that before we even start thinking about what we could earn, we need to set some guidelines.

Often, we bring our assumptions about salary to the conversation, and these can be incredibly hard to overcome (see my last Pondering Careers newsletter for more information about the mental shortcuts we take and how they work).

For a real-life example of this, I've asked my 15 year old to rank ten common jobs in order from highest paying to lowest paying, and this is what she came up with:

I'm not one bit surprised about the Electrician being first on her list - kids are constantly told that they can earn loads in trades, and obviously the message is sinking in. But note where Train Driver comes in her list - second from the bottom, yet it's actually second highest.

To expand our sample, and as my 16 year old is busy with his mates at the gym, I've asked ChatGPT to act as an average 15 year old, and this was their response:

1. Solicitor (Seems like lawyers make the most because they have lots of responsibility and go to court.)
2. HR Manager (Managers in general seem like they would earn more since they are in charge of people.)
3. Geologist (It sounds like they work in science, which feels like it would pay a lot.)
4. Train Driver (Driving trains seems like a big responsibility, so I’d guess it pays well.)
5. Electrician (They fix things that are really important, so they should be paid well.)
6. Secondary Teacher (Teaching teenagers seems tough, so I think they should earn a decent amount.)
7. Salesperson (I imagine that selling things could earn you a lot, especially with bonuses.)
8. Traffic Controller (It looks like a simple but important job, so I'd place it in the middle.)
9. Personal Assistant (Helping someone important is probably more of a support role, so not as high paying.)
10. Gardener (Seems more like a casual job, so probably lower pay.)

These aren't shocking answers, in fact, they're probably not far off what most of us would have guessed, but the reality is quite different:

1. Geologist $128,448
2. Train Driver $126,113
3. HR Manager $115,510
4. Solicitor $107,538
5. Electrician $96,937
6. Secondary Teacher $90,934
7. Traffic Controller $60k to $80k
8. Personal Assistant $70,816
9. Salesperson $56,413
10. Gardener $50,070

Geologists come in at the top, closely followed by Train Drivers.

What did you think?

Did you get them in the right order?

The point I'm trying to make is not just that, when we're thinking about salary, we bring our assumptions to the table, but also that those assumptions are often wrong.

If a student wants to look at what they could earn in different professions then that's ok, but we go to the source and look at what's actually on offer. Usually, I'll start by looking for job ads for similar roles in the local area, since these give us a good idea of what a realistic salary looks like.

I also explain that there's a big difference between the 'Average Taxable Income' we see in the news each year when the ATO releases their statistics for the year and the 'Median' salary - which gives us a much more representative idea of what you could earn in that job.

Sure, some surgeons earn $460k per year or even more, but this isn't the whole picture. The median salary (not taxable income, which includes all sorts of other income from investments etc.) for surgeons is 'just' $192k, less than half the 'average', because a small number of very high earners drag up the average salary.

This median gives us a much more realistic idea of what young people could expect to earn if they became a surgeon, and, perhaps, if they knew this they might be less keen to spend 11+ years training to get there.

Taking some time to look at actual salaries, attached to real job ads, can help bring it all into context for young people.

Supply and Demand

Salaries are also a product of supply and demand, so, for example, when we build up ideas about how much young people can earn as tradies, we run the risk of oversupply down the track.

This is happening right now in some places in China - a belief that engineering would be a secure, well-paying profession led to students signing up for engineering degrees in droves, but an oversupply of graduates has led to low salary and few prospects for promotion, so now some universities are ditching their engineering courses .

There's no guarantee that looking at salary prospects today is going to translate to the same level of salary later on in your career, so, at best, it should be just one factor to consider.

Starting salaries are even more fraught with risk.

Take teaching, for example - in a drive to attract more teachers into education, governments across Australia have boosted starting salaries, and NSW now boasts that as a teacher you can earn more straight out of uni than in any other profession.

But, as we all know, this is often where you stay. Positions for senior teachers can be hard to acquire, which means that your starting salary could be where you cap out.

Other professions may offer far lower starting salaries, but give you more room to grow, and if a student gets caught up focusing on starting salary in their decision making this could have more significant ramifications later in their career when they start to want something more.

So, how should we talk about salary?

In my sessions with adults I'll often ask early on if we need to try to maintain a certain level of salary (you know, so people can keep paying the rent or mortgage), but I'm not sure if it's really necessary to talk about it with school students.

Think about it this way - we don't check with students if they'd prefer to always work part time or full time once they leave school, we just assume that full-time employment is the default. There will, of course, be some people for whom full-time employment isn't the best outcome, but for the majority we assume that this is what they're working towards.

In the same way, I don't think we need to talk too long and hard with young people about income and salary, at least in the context of using it as a basis for their decisions.

If you realise you have a student/young person who's clearly got incorrect ideas about what they will earn in a pathway, then that's worth addressing, and in the same way if you have a student who's determined to follow a path that seems more risky (influencer, anyone?) then you could work with them to make a back up plan, or talk about other ways to make an income while they build their profile.

Maybe it's just me, but I hate the idea of kids lining up their options and then picking the one that earns the most.

What do you think?

Should we talk about salary, and, if so, how should we go about it? It's not an easy topic to tackle, but one that deserves our time and attention.

If you have thoughts, tips, or examples of practice, please share them in the comments.