Average pay raise after PE

[Mangano]

I believe that the local public entities (i.e. City of San Diego, County of San Diego, etc.) advertise a 10% raise as a standard.  I believe that is a decent point to make when discussing salary with a public company.

 

[NHPE]

Before PE, I was making an equivalent of $86/hour gross (all in salary, bonus, and extra, no overtime position, I factored in all hours worked for a total of 2800). I expect to get around a 10% increase once I change positions as a result of the PE and nothing before that time. I'll be doing that in the next year or so. 

PE makes you more marketable, indicates you are competent, helps you be retained, and is a point of personal pride. 

As a side note, if PEs lobbied the state boards to restrict what non-PE engineers could do much more tightly the pay increase from being a PE would increase quite a bit more. An example of this is a physician. You can't practice medicine without being licensed. You can't practice medical specialties without being board certified. It's a heavily licensed and restricted sector. 

 

[NHPE]

PE licensure is already quite a bit more stringent in the states as it requires passing an exam than elsewhere which is positive from the perspective of pay increases. Most other countries do not require an exam and only require sponsorship, education level, work experience, and a write up of all projects. This depresses wages more than would otherwise be the case if difficult exams were implemented. 

PE salary boosts would also be more if NCEES raised the cut score   which would decrease the supply of PEs.