Salary expectations

We got quite a bit of press regarding our recent article in the Journal of Business and Psychology

The comments that were posted by viewers of the news story were very interesting. One of the things that is clear is that there are some people who think we are lying about the salaries of young university grads. We thought we'd post some salary data based on the January 2009 Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada. Below are the average salaries for full-time employed Canadian university graduates by age band.

Age	Average Salary
15 to 19	$ 24,906.86
20 to 24	$ 32,812.88
25 to 29	$ 44,735.33
30 to 34	$ 51,061.21
35 to 39	$ 54,371.76
40 to 44	$ 55,717.31
45 to 49	$ 58,584.66
50 to 54	$ 58,607.87
55 to 59	$ 57,126.13
60 to 64	$ 55,606.74
65 to 69	$ 47,590.48
70+	$ 56,123.41

To add further context, a Canadian earning $100,000 would be in the 96th percentile of Canadian earners, and a person earning $70,000 (the average salary expectation in our study after 5 years of career work) would be in the 83rd percentile. The 50th percentile (i.e., the median) salary is about $48,000.

If you're curious about how recent university grads fare depending on their occupation, here is that breakdown for ages 20-29.

	20 to 24	25 to 29
Senior Management	.	$ 29,029.00
Other Management	$ 33,432.88	$ 58,610.65
Prof-Business/Finance	$ 46,058.78	$ 49,980.13
Finan/Secret/Administ	$ 29,504.34	$ 41,634.56
Clerical/Supervisors	$ 28,697.27	$ 35,257.00
Natural/Appl Sciences	$ 37,155.29	$ 54,470.63
Prof-Health/Nurse/RNs	$ 44,314.34	$ 57,463.18
Tech/Assisting/Health	$ 34,295.81	$ 39,519.43
S.Science/Govt/Relig	$ 32,466.92	$ 43,247.00
Teachers & Professors	$ 37,594.93	$ 43,304.40
Art/Culture/Rec/Sport	$ 33,594.64	$ 47,226.22
Wholesale/Tech/Insur	$ 28,989.57	$ 40,566.47
Retail/Sales/Cashiers	$ 22,013.09	$ 32,066.66
Chefs/Cooks/Food/Bev	$ 24,250.17	$ 28,053.88
Protective Services	$ 34,047.52	$ 51,413.84
Childcare/Home Supp	$ 27,791.29	$ 29,103.89
Sales/Service/Travel	$ 23,364.17	$ 28,277.85
Contractors/Supervisor	$ 51,350.14	$ 55,632.33
Construction Trades	$ 39,563.32	$ 46,081.62
Other Trades	$ 39,267.76	$ 52,155.71
Transport/Equipment	$ 42,019.71	$ 44,861.27
Trades Helpers/Constr	$ 32,068.61	$ 33,915.53
Primary Industry	$ 46,795.97	$ 52,239.61
Machine Ops/Assemblers	$ 31,242.07	$ 42,311.14
Process/Manuf/Utility	$ 25,149.72	$ 31,884.95

Great Expectations

The GenCareerShift team recently published an article in the Journal of Business and Psychology that details our findings from a recent study (partering with D~code). The results show that recent university graduates had reasonable expectations for their starting salaries (about $43,000), but they expected a 62% pay increase within the first 5 years on the job (up to $70,000). Also, almost 70% of respondents expected to be promoted within the first 18 months of starting their first career job.

Since our data were collected in 2007, the natural question is whether a hard economy has attenuated the expectations of young workers. Evidence from another study, conducted by Sara De Hauw and Ans De Vos in Belgium shows that graduating students' expectations about pay, training, career development and work-life balance did not change between 2006 and 2009, but they did lower their optimism and their expectations for a social work environment and job security.