From a WSJ blog.
Wages rose 3.4% from 2011 to 2012 for full-time workers in computer and mathematical occupations, 5.1% for accountants and auditors, 7.5% for electrical engineers, and 4.4% for mechanical engineers.
…For job seekers across the occupational spectrum, bigger paychecks for the most sought-after workers could signal higher turnover and faster wage growth throughout the economy.
But the ratio of employment to the working-age population remains abysmally low, and unemployment among workers under 30 remains abysmally high. I would think that if you’re an aggregate-demand, Phillips-Curve type of guy, you have to forecast continued low wage growth. If instead we see bigger paychecks “across the occupational spectrum,” what sort of AD story could you tell?
It all has to do with Experience aka real life education. A business has almost no incentive to educate a young person because the lack of firm loyalty goes both ways and the employee will leave for a higher wage. Unless you are good at retaining your most highly skilled you are going to pay higher wages to people with the right experience than pay someone less to get the experience and either pay way more in the mistakes they make or paying for extra experienced personal so they can check the quality.
It always ends up being cheaper to pay for more experienced people. Trust me I have seen it as a Financial Analyst who does project analysis, so I have a lot of good data points. Paying for a good technical personal is the same as two or three average technical workers. When a Technical person can make one mistake this is the equivalent of their yearly salary, paying higher wages so for someone who will not make that mistake is cheaper and reduces read tape (adding extra quality steps), and increases employee satification (most people do not like to check others work, it is boring grunt work that is very tempting to take shortcuts with)
Big accounting firms might have a good model in the current market. Get paid a restively low salary on a per hourly bases but get a lot of grunt work but be exposed to a lot of different and high level information and people, you get good experience and then can leave after a few years and get a good job at higher salary and less hours. You can learn alot by trying to find mistakes and checking others work.