I think its very spread out at least in Europe in my experience. Hell even my own brother is envious on my salary because he got a engineering degree (vs my IT degree), so "by right" he should have a higher salary than me. Aside from the fact that he's employed by the local government to move paper from a desk to desk or rubber stamp documents. My parents also think the same as being civil engineers themselves. Paraphrasing: doctors, lawyers and engineers should have the highest salaries whatever job they do, everyone else should just fight over leftovers.