Posted by on Jan 13, 2013 in Career Salaries | 0 questions

To answer the question, “how much does an engineer make?” it is, usually, a lot!

If you believe that you have the inclination to hang in there with the education process, in most cases, you are going to be compensated well for your investment of time, energy and expenses.

If you have no doubt that you can stay with the program and become an engineer then, by all means, set your goal on becoming one in the field that you feel the most calling toward.

Not only can you experience a great salary, you can also bring into your reality a job that will make you feel like you are never working.

Most people want to do what he or she loves, but some don’t feel that they can get themselves to that place because of the educational requirements.

petroleum-engineer-careers

If you know that you have the passion and commitment to get an engineering degree, that’s fantastic. Now, you get to decide what is more important; the income or the love of your job. And you should even be able to find a career that answers both needs sufficiently.

The Engineer Salary You Want

The engineer salary that you will make will depend, specifically, on your particular specialization. There is nothing wrong with knowing how much money you want to build the kind of life that you want, so if you feel flexible about the work you are willing to do, by all means, check out the various incomes.

Perhaps, among the five top-paid engineering careers you will see one that makes you certain that it can provide you with fulfillment. It is certainly worthy of your investigation.

engineer, planning

What you find can also be quite surprising. All careers are certainly not created equally, and the idea that a certain amount of time and money spent on education guarantees any specific level of income is just not true. Many people find themselves making $100,000 or more with a four-year degree, and yet a great deal of others may never see $75,000 annually in their entire career.

Do yourself the favor of taking a good look at the realities of an engineer’s income before getting too far into your specialty if top pay is more important than doing a specific job.

It is certainly a choice that is personal and yours to make.

What You Do Or Who You Are

Many years ago, people weren’t giving a lot of thought to differentiating who they were from what they did. Society would say, “He’s a doctor” or “She’s a schoolteacher” and stereotypes were rarely discussed.

It was fairly acceptable to everybody to allow their career to define themselves for others. There has been much more awareness brought to the table about that these days, and many do find themselves wanting their work identity to be separate from their social identity.

electrical engineering salary

If you want such a separation for yourself, then you will find it even easier to choose a career for a specific income goal. You may not love the sound of being a nuclear engineer, but you may love the income, and there is nothing wrong with that!

The Bureau Of Labor Statistics names nuclear engineers up in the top, reporting an annual median salary of $99,920, with computer hardware engineers coming in just below at $98,810 in 2010. Aerospace engineers averaged just below that at $97,480.

It is interesting to note that all three examples of income were reported as what could be expected with a Bachelor’s degree. So, if you see yourself as more ambitious than that, and want to earn a master’s degree or a doctorate’s degree, you may likely find that you can bring an income that is well over these figures.