The salary differences between graduates of bachelor’s and master’s programs are becoming smaller and smaller, shows the graduate tracking (ATRACK) from Statistics Austria published on Wednesday. However, bachelor’s starting salaries did not rise across the board; there were increases primarily in the areas of health and social services as well as education. According to the analysis, men continue to be overrepresented in training fields with higher incomes.
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Degree still guarantees a good starting salary
A degree is still a guarantee for a quick entry into professional life and a good starting salary, Statistics Austria General Director Tobias Thomas summarized the results in a broadcast. On average, young professionals with a bachelor’s degree find their first job within about two months; for master’s graduates, it takes less than a month. The employment rate twelve months after graduation has increased again over time, for Bachelor graduates from 77.3 percent in 2008/09 to 81.8 (2020/21) and for Master graduates from 84.3 to most recently 87.3 percent.
Bachelor graduates have caught up in terms of earnings; the difference fell from just under 600 to around 200 euros between 2008/09 and 2020/21. While master’s graduates received a median of between 3,100 and 3,300 euros gross per month for a full-time position twelve months after graduation in the years examined, the median income of bachelor’s graduates rose significantly from 2,653 to 2,986 (2020/21) euros from 2012/13 onwards. Graduates in the fields of health and social affairs as well as education particularly benefited.
Big differences in gender
The differences by gender are still large. According to the most recent data, men earned about the same amount as women with a master’s degree on average twelve months after completing their bachelor’s degree. According to the release, this is partly because men more often choose fields with relatively high median incomes (computer science and communications technology; engineering, manufacturing and construction), while women are overrepresented in the comparatively low-paying training fields of social sciences, journalism and information technology as well as humanities and arts are. However, according to ATRACK analyses, women generally earn less on average than their male colleagues, even if they have completed the same training qualification in the same field of training.
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