In May 2018, the Australian Tax Office issued a report on Higher Education Loan Program (HELP, formerly HECS) debt in Australia. It found that, while the average amount of debt accumulated by a graduate was $20,303, the number of graduates with more than $50,000 of debt had grown by 33,825 over the course of a single calendar year. Worse, the number of graduates with more than $100,000 of debt had grown to 14,046.
Whatever your own student debt situation looks like—and it’s possible that you don’t have any at all—acquiring a degree is also a significant investment of time (which, as they say, is itself money). So it’s perfectly understandable if, having graduated, you’re eager to get the best possible return on the investment you’ve made in your own education. Do we think it’s wise to consider only salaries when selecting a career? Of course not. But it would be equally misguided not to consider them at all. So, with that in mind, read on to learn which graduate careers can offer you the best starting salaries.
According to the 2017 Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), published by Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT), dentists are ‘making it rain’ like nobody else with a median starting salary of $78,300. However, this is also the career that had the most pronounced gender disparity with regards to salaries: while male dentistry graduates earned a median salary of $94,600 in 2017, female graduates earned $83,500. The average salary for an experienced dental specialist is $253,442.
Like their colleagues in dentistry, graduates who embark on the long path to becoming a doctor receives a generous salary. In 2017, the overall median salary for medicine graduates was $70,300 (with a difference of $1,000 between male and female graduates). While the salary is relatively high, it should be noted that many junior doctors in Australia continue to work longer shifts (on average) than other career starters, with some interns regularly clocking 70 hours per week. Hence, as an hourly rate, the pay for junior doctors is less competitive than it may at first appear.
Having said that, medicine is a good example of a field in which graduates are frequently required to complete on-the-job training before receiving their professional accreditation: this tends to result in low starting salaries that grow rapidly as one begins to specialise (vocational training can take up to eight years following graduation). For example, while the mean starting salary for a medical intern is $70,300, the average salary for an anesthesiologist is $225,934; for cardiologists, it’s as high as $412,168; for haematologists, it’s $180,000; and for neurosurgeons, it’s $538,117. Each of these medical specialties requires extensive additional training, with the job titles ‘protected’ by accrediting bodies like the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP).
Statistics about the average salaries of graduate engineers can be tricky to interpret. We know from the 2017 QILT GOS that the overall median salary for engineers was $64,000, with little variation between male and female graduates.
For more specific data, it’s necessary to turn to the Hays 2018-2019 Salary Guide, which identifies different subcategories of engineering. For example, while graduate mining engineers in Western Australia earned an average salary of $80,000–100,000, a graduate design engineer in the same state earned $55,000–75,000. Salaries for experienced engineers can rise to as much as $185,808 for a petroleum engineer and $112,586 for an electrical engineer.
Nevertheless, engineering graduates as a whole tend to receive competitive remuneration, with many fresh graduates responding to their starting salary just like this GradAustralia insider at Lendlease: ‘The pay is brilliant and more than I would have ever thought to receive on my first year out of uni.’
According to the QILT report, teachers in the public school system receive an average starting salary of $63,500. This can grow in some states following a mandatory twelve-month probationary period for teachers in their first full-time position. In addition to a competitive salary, teachers enjoy several benefits, such as access to salary-packaging arrangements and, for teachers in rural areas, relocation and rental subsidies.
Salaries for teachers in the private school system vary based on experience, position, and other factors. As a general guide though, they tend to be higher than salaries for equivalent positions in the public system. According to the 2018–2019 Hays Salary Guide, the average salary range for an experienced teacher in the public system is $65,000–98,000 (depending on one’s level of responsibility). In the private system, the average salary range is $70,000–110,000.
The 2017 QILT GOS report revealed that social workers earned a median salary of $62,600 during their first year of full-time employment. The gender salary gap continues to close as the result of an equal remuneration order issued by Fair Work Australia in 2012. However, evidence of a gap persisted in 2017, with the median salary for male graduate social workers $600 higher than for female graduates. After the first year, the average salary range for a social worker grows to between $65,000 and $85,000.
Social work has been identified by the federal government’s Department of Jobs and Small Business as being one of the fastest-growing careers, with more than 25,000 new jobs appearing in the social work industry within the next five years.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare predicts that, over the coming five decades, elderly Australians will represent an ever-larger proportion of the population. People aged over 65 currently make up 15 per cent of the population, with this figure rising to 22 per cent by 2057.
The steady aging of Australia’s population must be matched by an equivalent growth in the health services industries if they are to meet mounting demand: this has become a central policy challenge of the federal government.
Hence, though the median salary for first-year health services and support employees is already a respectable $61,300, many pundits expect it to rise as the government (and private employers) attempts to entice more young Australians to launch a career in health. In fact, salaries for healthcare workers are already among the fastest-growing in the country. As a result, when we ask our industry insiders to comment on their salaries, we generally get responses like this one from a midlevel employee at the Western Australia Department of Health: ‘although we do not receive bonuses, graduates who work within the Department of Health can expect extremely attractive salaries in comparison to the private sector.’
If you’ve seen Suits, then you probably have a general idea of the financial future that awaits law students: it’s a glossy vision of yachts, private rooms in fancy restaurants, fancy cars, and designer clothes, all brought together by a seemingly endless torrent of cash. In fact, while new entrants to the law profession are amply compensated—the QILT GOS report found that first-year lawyers and paralegals earn a median salary of $60,000—there is significant variation within the industry.
The main factors affecting first-year salaries in the legal industry are the area of law in which you choose to practice, whether you choose to work in-house or for a firm, and, if you choose the latter, the size of the firm that employs you. As a result, the 2018 Hays Salary Report includes average salaries ranging from $46,000 for a paralegal in a small private firm to $68,000 for a graduate lawyer at a top-tier private firm. After three years, this can grow to an average salary of $64,000 at the small private firm or $82,000 at the top-tier private firm.
If you’re pursuing a career in one of the above fields, then it should be encouraging to learn that you’re on track to receive some of Australia’s most competitive professional remuneration. However, it also helps to put each salary into context before using it as the basis for an important career decision. With this in mind, you can learn more about the factors that affect graduate salaries by reading the article “Graduate salaries: what they don’t tell you”. You can also head to the GradAustralia website and read what graduate employees in your chosen field have said about the salaries they’re receiving at some of Australia’s best-known employers.