Another misleading article to confuse the public
 

Found this in an article of America's "Cushiest" Jobs. Im not sure but those numbers...........yeah, seem a little........."off". And to think the previous article was "10 Sexiest Jobs". C'mon, we couldn't even make it to the top ten?;)

Industry: Transportation and material moving
32. Aircraft pilots, copilots and flight engineers
Hours/week: 22.3
Hours/year: 1,161
Earnings/year: $127,501

URL:
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/custom/msn/careeradvice/viewarticle.aspx?article
id=1241&SiteId=cbmsn41241&sc_extcmp=JS_1241_advice &catid=

Six figures a year? Pleaaase...

However, "Median" implies that a BUNCH of salaries were lined up from least to greatest, and an entry was deleted from each end of the data until the literal center of the data series was met. So if the median salary is $130,000 a year (or whatever it said), then there are just as many pilots making six figures as there are making peanuts.

Now obviously $130K seems high for a median, so the source data was probably skewed. Perhaps they only looked at captains, or pilots at major airlines (aka not regional).

great point....this could be something we look at with optimism.(provided their data source wasn't bogus, which it probably was) maybe there are just as many guys makin that much more. its a big world out there when you account for all areas of aviation outside the airlines, it wouldnt surprise me.

U.S. Department of Labor
Bureau of Labor Statistics


http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes532011.htm

About May 2006 National, State, Metropolitan, and nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates
These estimates are calculated with data collected from employers in all industry sectors in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in every State and the District of Columbia. The top five employment and wage figures are provided above. The complete list is available in the downloadable Excel files (XLS).
Percentile wage estimates show the percentage of workers in an occupation that earn less than a given wage and the percentage that earn more. The median wage is the 50th percentile wage estimate--50 percent of workers earn less than the median and 50 percent of workers earn more than the median. More about percentile wages.

(1) Estimates for detailed occupations do not sum to the totals because the totals include occupations not shown separately. Estimates do not include self-employed workers.
(2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data.
(3) The relative standard error (RSE) is a measure of the reliability of a survey statistic. The smaller the relative standard error, the more precise the estimate.
(4) Wages for some occupations that do not generally work year-round, full time, are reported either as hourly wages or annual salaries depending on how they are typically paid.
(5) This wage is equal to or greater than $70.00 per hour or $145,600 per year.
(8) Estimate not released.

I love that any statistic that sights how much pilots work only counts the time we're paid for (block to block). They never seem to consider all the time that goes into preparing for a flight, the dead time between flights, or the time away from home, all of which counts as "work" in my book.

Too bad the hours worked per year in that link don't take into consideration somewhere around 300 hours of monthly TAFB.

Guess they think if you aren't in the cockpit you aren't working...

If you go the Dept of Labor link that Jumper gave us you will see how they came up with the money we make. It is based on a 40 hour week so if you make $70 and hour they say you will make $145,000 a year because we all work 40 hours a week and credit 160 hours a month...right?

Funny how one government agency, Dept of Labor, has not idea of the duty and work restrictions another agency, Dept of Trans, has on us.