<p>Are there opportunities for civil engineers to make high salaries over time, like around 100,000 dollars a year?</p>
<p>Yes, if you're a PM or Manager with about 10 years or so of experience.</p>
<p>A couple of points to consider regarding civil engineer salaries:</p>
<p>(1) relative to other engineers, civils are much more likely to work in the public sector (i.e. goverment jobs). Public sector jobs tend to have significantly lower salaries than private sector jobs, but they may also have significantly better benefits, particularly with respect to health insurance contributions and pension plans.</p>
<p>(2) relative to other engineers, civils are much more likely to live and work in small towns and rural areas, as opposed to major cities. Every community needs civils, whereas other engineers are more likely to be concentrated in urban areas with high-tech or other industries. The salaries in outlying areas tend to be significantly lower, but the cost of living (especially for housing) tends to be significantly lower as well.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with Corbett. You can also try to PM "aibarr", although she's AWOL right now getting married. She's a practicing civil engineer and probably the most knowledgeable person about civil engineering here.</p>
<p>Yeah, she's actually a Structural engineer. She's answered quite a few of questions and was very helpful.</p>
<p>Im a structural engineer. With dollars adjusted to average cost of living, as a civil or structural, one can move through the 50s and 60s relatively quickly. Once in the 70s and up, as a design engineer, one would be hard pressed to continue increasing rapidly. I believe the salary surveys show that at 20 and 30 years of experience the average salary is still the 80s. However, there are exceptions. Managers and salesmen in larger firms break 100k, as do many small firm owners. If you are up for a tough work environment, civil engineers in heavy construction (working for a bridge contractor for example) make much more than design engineers. But the hours are worse and moving ever few years is generally required.</p>
<p><a href="2">I</a> relative to other engineers, civils are much more likely to live and work in small towns and rural areas, as opposed to major cities. Every community needs civils, whereas other engineers are more likely to be concentrated in urban areas with high-tech or other industries.*</p>
<p>Though I can't say this based on personal experience yet, I think that statement's somewhat misleading. At my school's career fair in NYC, the overwhelming majority of engineering companies hire civils rather than chemicals, mechanicals, or EEs. If you work in construction or structural engineering, there will be plenty of jobs in big cities as well as smaller towns, so I don't think it's really going to have much of an impact on where you live. It's all up to you.</p>
<p>Civils, in general, have more geographic flexibility than engineers in other disciplines: they can work in the biggest cities, the most isolated rural areas, or anywhere in between. It's your choice.</p>
<p>Civils who choose to work in small towns or rural areas will generally receive lower salaries than those who choose to work in big cities. However, this may be a misleading comparison, because the living expenses in small towns or rural areas are generally lower as well. So the standard of living may be comparable, even with a lower salary.</p>
<p>The point of the original post was that average salary figures don't tell the whole story. Civil engineering salaries may appear relatively low, yet many civils have significantly better benefits and significantly lower living expenses than engineers in other disciplines.</p>