Driving a truck has become a good paying career and recently it has been noted that pay raises in trucking have gone up considerably across the country. In fact, truck drivers have been treated to a better pay trajectory in 2017 than attorneys, loan officers and field engineers. This according to a recent study.
Employment hub Glassdoor ran a study which involved surveying data from millions of salaries collected from U.S. workers. In the study it was found that trucking as a sector has enjoyed one of the most considerable gains in 2017.
Truck drivers have seen their median base salary rise 5.7 percent to $52,079. In comparison, the median base pay for all U.S. workers came in slightly lower at $51,556 which was just up 2 percent from the previous year.
Interestingly, truckers who enjoyed a nearly 6 percent increase where tied with barista’s and insurance agents for the fastest annual growth in pay.
For the trucking industry it’s the demand for online retail that is putting upward pressure on wages for workers like truck drivers, delivery drivers and warehouse associates. The trucking industry has been experiencing a shortage in drivers which is another reason for increasing wages among drivers.
In other related compensation news, the study also found that attorneys have seen their median base pay decline by 3 percent in 2017. But even with the drop in median bas pay, attorneys still enjoy the fifth-highest base salary of all 85 positions that were analyzed.
Unlike truck drivers, there has been an oversupply of law school graduates in recent years which is no doubt contributing to the decrease in pay for attorneys recently.
It is also interesting to see that geographically, workers in the Boston and San Francisco metro areas saw the fastest increase in pay for 2017.
It looks like 2017 was a good year to be a truck driver and not such a great year to be am attorney.