I was inspired by my blog about “the highest paying jobs” to search for the real highest paying jobs in the US. As I mentioned I was disappointed with the results provided by both Career Builder and Monster. But then, I stumbled upon www.payscale.com. The site builds itself as “a trusted market leader in online salary.” Surely a trusted market would have accurate data. When I did a search on Neurosurgeon pay, here is the data the site gave:

Median Salary by Years Experience – Job: Neurosurgeon (United States)

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I spent few minutes trying to make sense of the data. Here is what I came up with:

1- If you have less than one year of experience as neurosurgeon, you will make an average of 258,000 per year.

2- If you have between 1 to 4 years of experience, your pay will go down to 200,000 per year. So, more experience = less pay.

3- If you have between 5-9 your pay will go up to 250,000. It is still not as good as your first few months of work but things are getting a little better.

4- Things improve when you have between 10-19 years of experience because you will make around 284,000 per year

5- You would think that experience counts for something but after working for 20+ years  your pay will actually go down to a level below the years between 10-19 of your practice.

I think you get my drift. The data does not make any sense. It makes me wonder if it is too much to expect the “trusted market leader in online salary” to have accurate data.