US Workers Now Expect Almost $79,000 Salary to Start a New Job | Hacker News Reader

US Workers Now Expect Almost $79,000 Salary to Start a New Job

bloomberg.com

57 pointspg_123434 comments

> For comparison, the median US household income was $70,784 in 2021

That $79,000 expectation figure appears to be an average, not median, but even so -- given that $79,000 is pretty close to the median income, having that as the average minimum salary expectation sounds completely reasonable and unsurprising.

What surprised me was the gender breakdown. Why do women have so much lower of a salary expectation?

> given that $79,000 is pretty close to the median income,

It's not.

Median personal income (household figures reflect that households can have more than one income earner) is ~38k.

This includes part time workers though. A lot of people work less than 40 hours a week and this drags down the number. If you only count full time median personal income, the figure is much higher.

I'd adjust that to: a lot of people work at least one job less than 40 hours a week.

I've held multiple jobs in the past for some extra income. So did my mother when we were growing up. So have all three of my siblings in between jobs or when their jobs didn't give them enough hours (they would have taken full time positions if any were available). So am I right now, actually. I just started a new full time job a week and a half ago and have been stuck doing exploitative gig app work to make ends meet before my first paycheck hits at the end of September.

All anecdotal, just a gentle warning not to leap to assumptions in areas like this without data to at least suggest the leap.

Annualized median earnings of those working full time wage or salary work is $57,200, as of July 2023

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.nr0.htm

I find it very hard to believe that median household income is more than twice median personal income. There must be a lot more households with only one wage-earner than with more than two.

> I find it very hard to believe that median household income is more than twice median personal income.

It’s not. The $79k figure is mean of some income measure (not sure which one). Median household income is around $70k, on which basis someone said that the $79k mean figure was “pretty close to” the median income. Which, maybe, loosely it is to the median household figure, but not to the median personal income figure which is probably more relevant to individual salary. $70k (median household income) is not more than twice $38k (median personal income).

You should adjust your expectations. All anecdotal, but where I lived before now there were 5 incomes in a single household. The people who lived there before us had 4. In my own prior housing it was 3. Where I live now there's just 2. It's pretty common, housing is expensive and jobs don't pay enough. It's difficult to find housing at all on just one income. My fiancee and I had to lightly massage some numbers to meet the income requirements for our current housing.

I’m 38, live in the upper Midwest, and don’t know a single family of my generation that relies on only one wage-earner.

Why would you expect that

Averages are just bad when discussing Americans income.

Averages are bad whenever the distribution is not normal, which tends to be the case for a lot of social/real world scenarios.

But everyone knows what the average means. It's useful to push certain narratives to a mass population that's poorly educated in statistics.

I really wish they did more to teach statistics in high school, it feels like this is a genuine useful application of a lot of mathematical concepts that are taught throughout the schooling years, but barely given any proper attention in school. I think someone that's in their last ~2 years of high school has enough mathematical background to learn and understand statistics very well. And god, this would be immensely helpful in getting a more educated public.

Seriously, the times I've seen politicians use bullshit graphs to misrepresent data, use subsets of data to push for a certain narrative (78% of people believe A [when in reality it's 78% of a sub-sample] so from the total it might be a 20% or whatever less impressive number). Or just plainly using average to describe a population that doesn't have a normal distribution.

This is absolutely true.

A pay rate that will have you living in the lap of luxury in one place will have you scraping just to eat in another.

Plus, a few CEOs making 8-9 figures will throw off the average for everyone.

In this particular case the median is pretty close to the average.

And their table scraps. There's plenty of VPs following along

Women are generally not expected to be breadwinners.

Women, if married, almost always marry a higher earner.

Women's worth in dating (and in life in general) is not tied to wealth and income the same way that it is for men.

There are many exceptions to all of these, but they still represent general trends in our society which don't push women to compete for higher wages in the way that men do.

> Why do women have so much lower of a salary expectation?

Nonfinancial criteria: Location, flexible scheduling, culture, workplace safety

As a group, women are more agreeable than men. If you are agreeable, then it’s less likely you will negotiate heavily when it comes to salary.

As a man I disagree.

as a generative AI model, I disagree with your disagreement

Probably a combination of the fact that women earn less in the first place, and are conditioned to be less ambitious.

Women are also more likely to be the second income, and have more limited geographical scope and nonfinancial criteria (e.g., work schedule preference.)

Same reason any person underprices themselves...they lack information.

It’s funny how this is phrased as if it’s shocking. Real wage growth has been very poor the last few decades. At some point it needs to catch up to other costs or the system is going to break down.

Based on their numbers, seems like this is around 8% higher than last year. Given that inflation over the last two years was around 10% and the average tenure at a job is probably more than a year, I think a 8% jump is reasonable. In other words, I think people who started new jobs kept up.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210650 (144 comments)

Sounds about right. ~25 years ago, most people I knew were getting 40 to 50K right out of school. Adjusted for inflation, this is about 43K in 1998 dollars.

Oh the outrage of wanting to keep up with inflation and livable wages. Bloomberg's editorialized, entitled worldview attempting to spark class-warfare between the struggling and the extremely struggling is transparent. In other countries, workers unionize and have protections most US employees lack.

Personal Income in the United States : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Income in the United States: 2021 - Census.gov : https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020 - Census.gov : https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27...

  'US Average Income'

https://archive.ph/g5Akd

I started as an IT professional circa 2010 making 48k a year, with 60k of college debt.

Estimating 3% cost of living adjustment that would be near 72k today.

Of course, a lot of things are a lot more inflated than 3% a year recently.

There's a lot of difference between "IT professional" and "average US worker".

I started at 50k in 2000 with a BS in computer science. In northeast though.

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