mechanical engineer Average salary per hour

  mechanical engineer payment

The median pay for mechanical engineers in 2017 was $85,880 per year, or about $41 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the typical entry-level education required is a bachelor’s degree. There were 288,800 mechanical engineering jobs in the U.S., with a projected job growth rate of 9 percent through 2026, in 2016, the last year the BLS counted.

Not a bad salary or growth prospects, but there are always ways for mechanical engineers to increase their salaries. Most approaches require planning and a significant investment in time, money, and education, as well as excellent communication and sometimes negotiation skills.

Here are a few of the best ways to start boosting your engineering salary.

1) Earn a Master’s Degree

A master’s degree is increasingly required to advance into higher-paying supervisory and management roles. It sharpens your technical skills and can establish you as an expert in a hot field, such as additive manufacturing and 3D printing. “Becoming a technical expert in a particular industry or product will command a higher salary than being a generalist engineer,” says Tom Goettl, vice president and principal recruiter for Konik PrimeStaff, a leading engineering recruiting company based in Edina, MN.

For You: An Engineering Education Should Never End

2) Earn an MBA

If you are interested in management opportunities, a Master of Business Administration degree might be the best approach. An MBA is ideal for mechanical engineers with an aptitude for business management. “The skills that come with an MBA enable engineers to be promoted into business oversight roles,” Goettl says.“They will learn, for example, how to tie profit and loss statements from the entire company into an engineering department and how every department’s performance affects the company bottom line.”

He does caution that management is not always a good fit for engineers.

“Many great engineers move into management roles only to learn afterwards that they dislike holding others accountable, or coaching and leading teams,” he says.“You don’t want to spend the rest of your career in a role you’re not passionate about simply because the pay is a bit higher.”