Not the most important topic but important enough to start the problem identification with. Salary and how much an engineer makes is a bit of a taboo between Civil Engineers. Still, there should be a forum where one can discuss this openly or in confidential manner.

The salary of Civil Engineers lags behind of other professional fields of similar academic requirements, responsibility and social impact. This is especially true for Structural Engineers.

Starting salary of graduate Civil Engineers is somewhere close to the bottom of the list every year among college educated technical professionals. And this picture only gets worse if we start looking at broader picture and include graduates in finance, law or commercial fields.

I live in a first world major city, combined expenses and living costs are similar to London, New York or Sydney.  For a quick comparison: a promising graduate Civil Engineer medium salary is equivalent of 22000 USD/year, if working for an international consultancy, coming from a recognized university. Maximum I personally heared of was 26000 USD/year, the guy was a genius, I felt my IQ increase just talking to him in the lift. Don’t think it is easy to get a graduate design engineer position at one of the top consultancies, these jobs are highly sought by hundreds of others leaving universities. One has to have top grades and need to stand out of the crowd, possibly with relevant work experience during studies.

On the other hand a fresh starter salary as a financial consultant is easily above 35000 USD/year at an international firm, no need to be a unique talente, just do your job, learn from your mentors.

(These facts are very easy to check if one talks with professionals honestly about the salaries they draw. Many online forums are available, but one can refer to online salary research sites as well. At the end of the post I left some useful links.)

Many people say graduate salaries are not suitable markers and it is worth looking at how salaries change with 5, 10, 20 years of experience. That is true, career progression matters more than the starting point. Unfortunately Civil Engineering will continue to show disappointing figures. As a result oriented and successful Civil Engineer, after 5-6 years one will earn about 45000-55000 USD/year. Of course professional accredited status, Professional Engineer licence or  Chartership at a recognized institution is a requirement, otherwise one’s salary is closer to the graduates. One must keep up with professional development, pass exams, stay competitive. By that time most of us led a desing team as senior engineer and probably had project manager role too.

Comparing this to someone who works in software development, product management, human resources, marketing or branding, the salary gap has noticeably grown. Most of my friends and acquaintances in the above fields earn between 75000 USD/year (software) to 95000 USD/year (marketing communication). They are not unusually successful at their fields, top 20%, so they are good, they make an effort. Some very talented and career focused individuals in finance and law make about 120000 USD/year after 6-7 years work experience. And this is still not the very top. These are people who are good at their jobs and work hard.

For completeness sake we mention that every few years professional magazines and newsletters write about a star Civil Engineer, a new prodigy, who became a deputy director with 7-8 years of experience and (never confirmed with any of them) but presumably earn the above 90000 USD/year salary. We are proud of these ladies and gents, you are literally one in a million, you are fantastic. Please share bits of the secret, it is definitely not just working hard, it is a way of working smart.
For due diligence I also have to mention that in Australia in a kind of Alice Through the Looking Glass: civil engineering salaries can easily be better than lawyers and accountants. It s just a cool place. Also, it is a confirmed by online research and from multiple sources, that if one is a registered professional engineer in Hong Kong, the salary is much better than any part of the civil engineering world (our unnamed sources mention a multiplier of 1.3 than in other developed countries). Hong Kong culture working means extreme long office hours though, that needs to be factored in.

After 10-12 years of experience a driven, motivated Civil Engineer possibly made it to middle management: senior project manager/ principal/ associate director level, every company calls it differently. By that time one usually manages multiple projects, leads a large team and handles multi-millions USD project finances as well as work is business development, trying to win new jobs for the company. By that time, engineers salaries start to vary by discipline quite a bit, but the above mentioned scenario allows our Civil Engineer to earn 65000-80000 USD/year.

I asked around, I have a few acquaintances in building service engineering, medical equipment sales, controlling and similar. I did my online research to confirm the answers match a good median value (internet overestimated slightly). After 9-14 years professionals in “non-civil” industries were earning about 105000-140000 USD/year.

Crunching the above numbers is easy, you can quickly calculate the cumulative Difference between the two salary groups (civil engineering versus more progressive professions), early life choices. In 5-6 years time this Sun of this Difference in salaries adds up to the equivalent of a 4 years Bsc/BA in an average (but well recognized) college fee fully paid for two kids. The Sum of Difference in salaries between the next 5 years means quite a few year of retirement savings.

And at that age, 11 years work experience you are 35 years old (even if you enjoyed life fullt, took it easy and finished university at the age of 24). So this tendency will continue till you are 50-65 years old, whenever you plan (able to) retire.

References:
See a few useful sites for comparison below. Just note, I often find these salaries quoted on the web 5-10% higher than in reality. Might be because they are partially built on online surveys and employees completing the survey make their salaries sound better.

This is the inconvenient truth many of us, Civil Engineers didn’t know when we were at the age of 18. We could have done the research, but we didn’t think of it. If this is the only difference this blog makes, it is already worth it. At our times our universities, our engineering institutions never showed us these tough realities (we will discuss the possible reasons later). But prospective engineers need to know and need to prepare. So we can plan. Solution can be crafted.

Check the above numbers, make your own assumptions and calculations, network and talk to engineers! Understand this, appreciate this. Or even better, prove it wrong. Show that there is a basic flaw in these estimations.

Sites similar to http://typesofengineeringdegrees.org/highest-paid-engineering-jobs/#context/api/listings/prefilter
Just google: engineering salary list, or similar.

If you want to make your own online research among a wide jobs use can use the below or similar sites. You can compare locations, years of experience, professions: www.payscale.com.