The Engineer as 1 Percenter

The New York Times on Sunday (January 15, 2012) has an interesting graphic - - The Jobs With the Most 1 Percenters.  The diagram shows occupations where workers are most likely to rank in the nation's economic top one percent (defined as workers in households with a pretax income of $380,000, excluding capital gains).  The diagram also illustrates the estimated absolute numbers of one percenters in the selected categories.  A sampling is provided below - -

•  Physicians 192,269 (the largest group and good luck with ideas of lowering the cost of health care and improving system performance)
• CEO and public administrators 161,069 (includes many engineers)
• Lawyers 145,564
• Recreation workers 10,594 (my first job was as a "recreation worker" at $1.45 per hour)
• Airplane pilots and navigators 3,054 (some one percenters love unions)
• Athletes, sports instructors and officials 10,354
• Financial services and sales 36,530 (selling the product is better than the results of the product)
• Petroleum, mining and geological engineers 1,830
• Architects 6,973 (like actors, talent based occupation with the top of the profession doing very well)
• Veterinarians 3,960 (spay and neuter has more value than pumping oil?)
• Sales engineers 705
• Announcers 1,285
• Accountants and auditors 61,033 (a million pages of tax code and a difficult CPA exam helps)
• Dentists 26,875 (don't point this out when in the chair)
• Podiatrists 1,040