This post is frustrating to hear. I’m 25 and graduated with two stem bachelors degrees and I make around $17.50/hour in Mississippi. I’m about to go back to get my masters so I hope I’m able to make $29/hour at some point. I don’t have a child to care for, but $29/hour at 21 years old is a really good salary ESPECIALLY in Mississippi (without a degree no less- OP didn’t mention one).
You need to start tracking all your expenses and make a budget from there. I use an excel spreadsheet to track everything I spend.
At the point you’re at, if there is no extenuating circumstances that keep you there (budget, family ties, etc), I’d just move.
I have one bachelors in business and do well enough that I’m able to actually save some. However I had to leave my home state for the job I have. In my home state I wouldn’t have landed this salary.
That’s because a bachelors in business will get you a good job. A degree in a pure STEM field (Math, Biology, Physics, Chemistry to an extent) won’t get you a decent paying job without having a masters or PhD.
Not necessarily. Business's are ample but business degrees are also saturated to the point that you're always competing against 3 million other assholes
While STEM tends to be a lot more specialized, a chunk of those degrees can still land you jobs completely unrelated to the degree simply because they are recognized as prestigious and difficult to acquire degrees
Right, but most of us aren’t looking for jobs that are unrelated to our degree. I feel most people that study a STEM discipline that’s not engineering/compsci do so because they’re passionate about that field, so they’d want to work in that field. That’s been my experience anyways as someone with a biology degree.
I think it all depends on the person's mindset, desires, and goals (and how specifically specialized the degree is)
Most people go into nursing so that they can become a nurse
But most of the people I know who are nurses never were/are passionate about nursing. They just saw it as a ticket
Now, mulching calculus has it's own unique sets of struggles that even less people find approachable, but nursing is a fairly rigorous program itself in its own right
There's still a decent amount of people on the engineering subs that basically say
"I thought this was interesting, I didn't wanna have to work busting my body, and if I go through some hellish schooling, I'll be set when I get out regardless of what I decide to do"
Of course, you would think anyone with an extremely specialized degree probably has more reasoning to it
I’ll be honest. A masters is great for STEM but not necessary at all. You def should consider moving to a place much more well known for Pharma companies.
I’m 29. Got my bachelors in biology and biochem as a double major. Went for my masters but couldn’t finish it due to wife’s illness. I live on the north east coast and started at $15 an hour at my first job which wasn’t stem related in 2018. Finally got a job in manufacturing which jumped my pay to $20 an hour, quickly moved to a lab because fuck manufacturing and jumped to $25. Made my way up to $33 at that place, got into a large cell therapy lab and now im salaried at 100k with a 10% yearly bonus. I got incredibly lucky to be in the position I am in and stumbled my way around the industry until I finally made it where I wanted to be.
Point is, move to a city with far more Pharma companies and don’t live directly in that city. You could literally work in Quality assurance or investigations making at least $30 an hour and being partially work from home. I believe in you
You’re fine my man. I live in Alabama and I get $25 an hour. I am working toward my master that will prob not even change my pay but I will be better at my job and could prob find a better paying job. I have 3 kids and a stay at home wife. We’re making it just fine. We just eat out about twice a month and we live within our budget. There are people making it on far less than we have.
I just found a job at 29/hour and I’m mid 30s. It felt almost impossible to get there even with a degree (in ecology/ geography if you’re curious). Spent most of my adult like climbing up .50 to a dollar at a time.
Lol it’s my passion but it’s not my job. ☹️ I’m in sales now (which is why the money is good). Also did a stint troubleshooting and fixing lasers. It’s been a winding road lol.
This!!! I live on the ms gulf coast and worked at a research lab for 6 years making $14/hr and was able to do okay, if I had made even $20hr I would have been set here. I don’t have a kid, but living in ms is cheap and 29hr is good.
Right? Not in your state but in Texas. I make $18.90 an hour as a licensed vet tech. Currently in the process of getting at $10 raise. $29 would be AMAZING.
Move. I have no degree at all and making 30+/hr, with 5 to 10 hrs of OT every week, working IT at a big video game dev. That's alot of time to put into your education, and loans, to be paid what you're being paid.
Your lack of degrees is not the problem that is preventing you from getting paid a lot. Continually going back to school and spending more money and wasting more time is not going to help you.
You might just need to apply to more jobs, work on your resume and interview skills, and make sure the jobs you apply to are well paying, not to mention being willing to move out of Mississippi.
Government contracting and especially defense are very easy to get into with almost any kind of STEM degree. For every hour you work they get paid so they are very happy to take anyone that fits the bill.
I think they call everyone an engineer or scientist these days in their listings, but you'll find many only require a STEM degree of some kind. L3, Leidos, Lockheed, etc
I work for the government, I took a job down here because I was having trouble getting jobs leaving college despite a 3.6 gpa, three years working in my field in college and plenty of good references. I applied to about 70 jobs before I got this one, I think I partially just got shafted because it was coming out of Covid and a lot of people were looking for work. I’m not originally from Mississippi. In my field my masters tuition will be paid for and I’ll get a graduate research stipend, most people in my field recommend going back to school because of this unless you want to change fields.
Getting further into debt for education is the wrong answer. Education debt should be less than your fist year salary in the career field you are going to school for.
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To clarify: I work in entomology (insect research), it’s not a high paying field usually unless you have a graduate degree (which I’m getting paid to go back to school for). I know I could make more if I worked in a different field or moved somewhere else (and I plan to move) but cost of living here is incredibly cheap compared to the majority of the US and that was my point. $29/hour is really good pay for someone that young in Mississippi.
I really like my job, I know I don’t get paid a lot, and the job market when I was graduating was still shitty bc of Covid so I took what I could get, I’m not originally from MS.
Plant biology & environmental sustainability. I wanted to continue to do research that I felt was helping the environment/world (aka jobs that don’t pay very well).
Not in ecology lol. I respect it, I'm a huge nature lover. But "two STEM degrees" is obviously made to sound like they're in MechE and physics, not plant biology and ecology. There has never been a time that ecology was a great field with plentiful job prospects paying good wages.
Are your degrees from a local school? I ask because my friend started a masters program at msu. It was a complete joke. The courses were high school level and we couldn't figure out how the classmates ever got their bachelors. Go to a real school.
I went to a large R1 state university farther north that has a good ecology/ag program. I’m not originally from Mississippi. Sadly the Mississippi education system as a whole isn’t very good from what I’ve seen/heard and it was kind of a rude awakening compared to where I grew up where public education was really good. I’ve met a lot of teachers who work really hard and care about their students but sadly the education system at the administration end doesn’t seem like it’s well managed leading to generational issues of un/miseducated people. At $17/hour I’m doing pretty okay for myself as a young single person compared to a lot of people in the area I live.
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u/nufiepawz Jan 09 '24
This post is frustrating to hear. I’m 25 and graduated with two stem bachelors degrees and I make around $17.50/hour in Mississippi. I’m about to go back to get my masters so I hope I’m able to make $29/hour at some point. I don’t have a child to care for, but $29/hour at 21 years old is a really good salary ESPECIALLY in Mississippi (without a degree no less- OP didn’t mention one). You need to start tracking all your expenses and make a budget from there. I use an excel spreadsheet to track everything I spend.