Novocastrian

I'm curious as to your field. In mine (atmospheric chemistry / physical chemistry) that's not at all true, in either the Uk, Germany or Canada where I am currently.

My first tenured (not tenure track) job paid about 90,000 DM (pre-Euro), the one I'm in now paid $C110,000 when I started in 1993 and has well more than doubled since then (admittedly including inflation related raises).

Perhaps it was a good thing to be an expat all these years after all. I appear to be one of those crusty old Profs.

old.sparkles

Since this thread is about apprenticeships, I'm an apprentice trained spark. Last earnings in UK before leaving (tax year ending Apr 2013) was £68k for 4 on / 4 off rota, 12 hour shifts with 26 days holidays, plus public and 1 other day off, and 100 hours of additional time off to account for rota.

not2old

wow, amazing, you must have slogged it for that money. Surely that's not the general run of the mill average Electrician wage working on land in the UK?

Did you calculate the number of paid hours that wage was and/or included bonus & shift premiums?

What would an average run of the mill 10 year experienced - either a wire puller, construction or industrial factory electrician earn on a 37.5 hr m-f earn?

Somewhere around £25k- £30k is my guess

BEVS

My husband is a time served plumber and gasfitter. He is 'advanced'. That takes 5 years of apprenticeship, coursework and work experience. It is now considered equal to a degree standard. A career tradesman.

He averaged well over GBP55K per year & more.
Yes. There were hours and commuting. Where isn't or wasn't.

old.sparkles

I am an industrial factory electrician. Days based M-F is around £35k plus bonuses plus benefits. For the £68k, I worked 12 hour shifts as stated, 2 days, 2 nights, 4 off taking only the minimum 4 weeks holiday through the year. Anything above 37.5 hours a week is considered OT, and all shifts carry a premium, but average is still only 42 hr week. I also got 4% performance related personal bonus and 7% company bonus in that figure. Think there may have also been a couple of call outs when off shift. Previous 2 years were also above £50k. Other perks are often good company pension, private health and freebees, staff discounts, etc.

dunroving

I'm in what's typically called sports science here, but encompasses what's called kinesiology in the US and also some public health.

It's difficult to compare to experiences that involve other currencies (that are affected by changes in exchange rate), and gathered over several years (as you say, cost of living increases). My UK salary converted to dollars has being going down ever since 2007, even though it's gone up in ££.

Anyway, some examples of academic positions advertised on jobs.ac.uk:

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Dental Therapy/Hygiene, Teesside University - School of Health & Social Care; £29,552 to £47,328

Senior Lecturer - Physical Assessment and Clinical Reasoning, Kingston University - Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education-School of Nursing; £40,763 to £48,206 including London Weighting

Lecturer (Early Career)/Lecturer, University of Dundee - Education, Social Work and Community Education; £34,233 to £45,954 pa.

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry, Loughborough University - Department of Chemistry; £38,511 to £54,841 per annum

- in the UK, other than Professor salaries, which are negotiable, all other ranks are pretty much fixed, similar to teachers' salary bands.

In the US, there is much more flexibility. An Assistant Professor in Social Sciences with a PhD might earn $60k, while at the same institution an assistant professor in business, law, or the sciences might earn $120k, otherwise they'd be off to industry where they could earn more.

Anyway, my original point was that university doesn't always mean better skilled or educated, and in some ways the higher up you go, the more you can lose out over a lifetime - depending on what discipline you work in and especially whether you go into teaching.

not2old

post #49 Bevs & post #50 sparkles thanks for that & it goes to show hard gaft even in the UK can pay well.

Many years ago (back in the 80's I think) there was a news article of a late 20's aged bricklayer in the UK that could earn £1000/wk. For that he was the fastest bricky alive who was paid by the number of bricks that he laid.

Similar today from this with inflation added....

Brickies earn £100,000 as building industry 'brawn drain' hits

I suppose similar in any job - performance based work can make one wealthy. As to whether it can be done for 20, 30 or 40 years is another issue - most dependent on the contract and/or the individuals ability to keep up the pace.

For our poster Gozit who wants to be 'hands on' - a trade with value & respect

http://www.bricklayer.co.uk/

http://www.bricklayer.co.uk/faq.html

Michael

My son's FIL is a professor for a university in San Diego and the MIL was a homemaker and has had MS for about 20 years. They live in one of the most affluent areas in San Diego (La Jolla) about 2 blocks from the beach. They constantly take expensive vacations and pay the cost when their kids family comes with them, have expensive cars, paid for the down payment on their kids homes, and always seem to have plenty of money. Since the MIL is in a wheelchair, they always book in expensive hotels that can accommodate her.

I wondered how they were able to live that type of lifestyle since even highly paid college professors normally don't make that kind of money to live that lifestyle. When I asked my son, he said it was because his FIL was also the director of the department that acquires government grants for research and apparently, he gets a percentage of each grant that is awarded and that is why his income is very high.

not2old

Nice lifestyle... good for him

A professor level IX at UCSD would give him at least $154k plus the extras

https://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/_fi...ofessor_AY.pdf

or aywhere up to $375K according to the next one

https://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/_fi...tice_scale.pdf

General pay scales all academic

https://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/aps...ry-scales.html

BEVS

Oh yes. I have a memory of that. Photos of him and his mighty hod.

Novocastrian

Ah there you are then: I've been a Full Professor for 23 years now.

Michael

A few possible flaws in your thinking. First it seldom works out when your desire is to work in one field but you work in another field because it pays better. When you love your job, things are easy to accomplish and enjoyable but when you are just going through the motions, the job becomes very difficult and you'll likely never achieve your goal of making a high income and will likely be on the chopping block when the lay offs occur. Next if we assume that you can get a job that pays $200k+ (probably difficult since even in the professions, probably only a small percentage make that kind of income), as a single person you can assume that at least 1/3 of the income will be paid in taxes of some sort and possibly as high as 50% in some countries.

High profit investments are also high risk investments and whenever someone assumes that they can beat the market (over 80% of the actively managed equity mutual funds underperform the market), the risk increases. Prior to the recession, there were many people investing in properties and making high 6 figure annual incomes but today, most are bankrupt. Others were invested in hedge funds or had portfolios that were high risk and today they are still significantly down as hedge funds have underperformed the market over the past 5 years and many high risk investment went out of business where as solid blue chip investments have recovered or exceeded their 2007 highs.

It's also unclear as to what type of degree you'd be seeking for your $200k+ job but whether it is in law or business, both are very competitive. Many people in business that are making high salaries are VPs, General Managers, someone who is in charge of a group, or someone that can bring in clients that are very profitable to the firm. Although having a very good understanding of the job is very important, many get into those positions more because of their charisma then their actual knowledge. The charisma is important since that person has to lead others and often has to talk to customers to bring in the business. Businesses pay high salaries for performance and not because of the degree that is held.

You indicate that a business/IT degree caps out around $85.000Cdn and that may be true in some areas of IT. Since I'm not sure what a business/IT job consists of, a pure highly technical IT job has a much greater chance of hitting that 200k+ income than most other jobs. But like all jobs, you have to be a top performer to achieve that salary but in IT, you don't need to be a General Manager, VP, lead a large group, bring in customers, or have the charisma to achieve that income. This area I know well since when I retired 13 years ago, my base salary was $150K plus a 20% bonus + $100k per year stock options. Although I worked in several management positions at different times (one was director of engineering), management was not anything I liked but my boss allowed me to be an engineer 90% of the time. When I changed companies, I was again given a management role but my boss wouldn't allow me be an engineer even part time and I hated the job. After 3 months I was so depressed that I either had to quit or again become an engineer and luckily my boss allowed me to become an engineer. After that I thrived and enjoyed my job and good salary increases kept occurring as my boss knew that I was one of the few employees that he could depend on. I assume that if I had continued to work instead of retiring 13 years ago, my base salary today would likely exceed $200K.

Sally Redux

Yes you can get some of your salary paid off grants in the US. This can push academic salaries up higher than the UK. Only the basic is pensionable though. However, in my husband's case too many other people were siphoning off grant money he brought in and it got to the point where a proper salary in the UK looked much more attractive.

Michael

Since my son's FIL is apparently the director of the department that all government grants are acquired through, I suspect in his case, the money received from government grants may have been greater than his basic salary. This fiscal year, UCSD acquired nearly $1 billion in government grants for research. If he gets 0.05% of the grant money as income, that is $500K.

UCSD pulls in almost $1 billion for research | UTSanDiego.com

I don't know if his income is $750k but from what I've seen from their lifestyle, it must be well above $250k.

Novocastrian

Boosting any faculty member's salary from government grants is absolutely forbidden in Canada. I had no idea that such a practice is common in the US (it most certainly wasn't when I worked there in the late 70s - early 80s).

I'm shocked but not really surprised.

Edit: It was the case back then that faculty salaries were sometimes calculated on an 8 or 9 month year. If you wanted to be paid for 12 months you were allowed to write your summer salary into the budget for research grants. I never agreed with this approach at the time and I now see that it was the thin end of the wedge which has resulted in the farcical situation you both describe.