Why your knowledge gets $14 richer every day.

The knowledge you gain each working day is worth about $14, according to an anslysis of salary increases.

People often say “you can’t value knowledge”

In a strict sense, that is probably true, but there is a proxy for the value of knowledge, and that is how much a knowledge worker earns. As Larry Prusak said

“When I was at my last job, at the age of 50 they paid me 10 times more than a 30-year old with the same qualifications. What was the residual difference? Knowledge and experience”.

The chart to the right is drawn from the ASME Engineering Income and Salary Survey 2012 and shows how average engineering salaries increase with years of experience. Each year of experience seems to equate roughly to an added $2750 in salary per year, or $14 per working day. This “value of experience” is a proxy for the value of knowledge, because experience is where knowledge comes from.

Here are some other numbers

• This site suggests that the market value of actuarial knowledge is $7960 per year of experience.
• This site suggests that the market value of office worker knowledge is $4467 per year of experience.
• This site suggests that the market value of Information Architecture knowledge is about $6000 per year of experience.

There are other sites out there that can give you other figures, but the phenomenon of the salary increase is all-pervasive – as you gain more knowledge and experience, you are worth more.

You can value that knowledge through the sorts of statistics shown here. A good knowledge worker might gain knowledge worth about $3000 in salary per year, or about $14 per working day.

Worth going to work for, wasn’t it!