That sounds sort of average or even below. The Elks club probably looks like that. For the top 2% intelligent people in the world, that counts as non-achieving. Working in a bookstore or running a gas station is not what you'd expect from geniuses.

Median income in the US is not quite $52,000, so Mensa is somewhat above average.

That's the median household income; i.e. two incomes. The median personal income is more like $30,000.

Whoopsie. Thanks for pointing that out.

How about working as a patent clerk or a lowly mathematics lecturer.

Yearly earnings is not the sole measure of success.

I don't disagree with you completely, just want to make a point that you can have an unfulfilling job and still make a lot of money.

The article is talking about people who drop out of school or don't go to college in the first place, and can't hold down a job. 82% of Mensa members have a four-year degree, and their median income is above average. Their demographic is clearly not concentrated on people like this. I'm sure many of their members have unfulfilling jobs or unfulfilling lives, as is the case with many people in general, but that's a different thing entirely.

(I feel like I should clarify that I'm not a Mensa member and don't really care about the organization one way or another. I was just curious about the initial claim and looked up the basic membership demographics.)

Mensa is just the top 2%, though. The top 0.1% are to Mensa as Mensa is to society as a whole. For the reallllllly high IQ people, your average Mensa member can be the worst. Smart enough to know they're smart, but unable to see how much higher the scale goes