Hat tip to Of Dollars and Data blog (great content for math educators!) for posting this chart (see the interactive version of the chart from plotly):

First, a little orientation: The X axis is hourly median wage for a given career and the Y axis is the differential in wages between the 10th and 75th percentile. So what the graph is telling us is that the careers that have the highest values on the Y axis have the highest percentage increase in wages between top (75th percentile) and bottom performers (10th percentile). As displayed on the graph, most of the high Y-axis values align with jobs in the entertainment business. For example, to take one job, Actor, you can see the hourly median wage is about $20 and the wage percentage increase between the 10th and 75th percentile is over 400%.

Have some fun with this graph by going to the interactive version here where your students can scroll over and find what career aligns with a given plot on the graph. Here are some questions:

• What 4-5 jobs have the lowest amount of wage dispersion between top and bottom performers (low on the Y-axis) based on the chart?
• Why do you think there is little difference in wages for these jobs?
• Identify 4-5 jobs that the highest paid on this graph (highest X-axis values). Do they tend to have a higher or lower degree of wage differential between top and bottom performers? Reasons why?
• Find the career that you are interested in. BEFORE you go to the DATA tab on the chart and predict the median wage and the wage differential for this job. Now, go to the DATA tab and see how you did. Does this impact how you think about your career?
• Excluding entertainment jobs, what are other examples of jobs that have relatively low wages and high wage differential (low X-axis, high Y-axis)? Does this make sense?
• Looking at the line that has been drawn on the chart above, what statement can you make about the general relationship between wages and the differential between wages among the 10th and 75th percentile. Start with a statement like….”the higher the median wage…”

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.