Much like the Gardening totals I shared here I have used Carl's Career Guide to put together a list of how much money you can earn from each career. Just looking at his guide and seeing which career has the highest hourly rate isn't quite accurate because $500 an hour doesn't mean squat if you only work 3 hours a week (I mean, in real life that'd be fantastic but, it just doesn't fly for our sims. lol)

The method: I took the hours per day and multiplied it by how many days you work in a week and multiplied that number by the hourly wage. This calculated the total salary for one work week. I have used one work week for each career level. I have also added the CASH that you can get as a reward for promotions. I did not include ITEMS that you receive with the promotion (which you could then sell for money). The final number is the accumulated total for all 10 stages and all cash promotion rewards.

The flaws/other considerations: These numbers are not absolute values. Just because a career says that you will make $55,000 accumulated through all 10 stages does not mean that is how much YOU will actually get. This is because you may need less than a week or more than a week to advance to the next stage. Also, the "Connections" trait will effect your career. This is ONLY THE CASH VALUE. You should keep in mind that a lot of these careers can be supplemented through extra work/income from home like royalties from books for the writers, royalties from apps/plugins/games for the tech guru, and selling paintings to collector/museum if you're a painter. Keep in mind you don't have to be in one of those careers to make money from home with those things either. You could get a higher paying career and supplement with these things and make even more then if you got the corresponding career. Like an Interstellar Smuggler that writes Science Fiction novels at home is going to make way more then a Creator of Worlds writer is going to make from work and royalties (depending on the skill quality and how many books they write of course). Also, I'm human, Carl's human, there could be human errors in this info...and most definitely some EA error I'm sure.

Here's the quick list from Most money to Least followed by a detailed breakdown of each career/branch.

$61,795 - The Boss - Criminal
$55,944 - Interstellar Smuggler - Astronaut
$52,280 - Triple Agent - Secret Agent
$51,416 - Space Ranger - Astronaut
$51,211 - Show Stopper - Entertainer
$50,835 - Start Up Genius - Tech Guru
$49,657 - Champion Gamer - Tech Guru
$45,551 - Concert Virtuoso - Entertainer
$43,935 - Double Diamond Agent - Secret Agent
$42,675 - The Oracle - Criminal
$39,923 - Scribe History - Writer
$38,809 - Celebrity Chef - Culinary
$38,778 - Celebrity Mixologist - Culinary
$37,721- Creator of Worlds - Writer
$31,938 - Patron of the Arts - Painter
$30,631 - Master of the Real - Painter

And here's the detailed breakdown by career type. The colors in these don't matter. I've just used the blue and green to separate the different branches.

















ETA: Here are the amounts for the teen careers (which anyone can have with this mod by plasticbox ).

Manual Labor - $4608
Retail - $2852
Babysitter - $1804
Barista - $1792
Fast Food Employee - $1763


Hope you find this helpful!!

So it looks like crime does pay, after all.

^ You stole my line

Thank you for putting this all together, Melbrewer367! This makes it all so clear. Is there a wiki, yet? This belongs there.

I forgot all about the wiki's! I have no idea. I'll have to check and figure out how to add it there.

I've been wondering about this--thanks for reading my mind and doing all the work!

Spectacular work, @melbrewer367 -- how sad that the top 3 jobs are criminals! I never play them, for morality reasons....

I just looked at the Wiki and it says you have to be staff to edit there. @leefish @plasticbox if one of the staff want to add my info for careers and gardens to the wiki I'm certainly okay with it!

That's quite a discrepancy between top and bottom, but it does bear noting that the list is pretty balanced. At first glance, it seems like the lowest-paying jobs are actually based on creative skills that can be turned into money (and probably require you to produce things for money as part of the career progression). Pretty good design, overall. "The Oracle" is probably the short end of the stick here since you don't actually gain anything outside of the job while the two tech careers are probably the ones that actually make the most based on their high base pay combined with the fact that programming can produce things for sale (I've never gotten to the point where you can make stuff with the programming skill so I don't know how lucrative it is)

Yes, this is true. That's why I made sure to put in the part about supplementing the careers with royalties and things like that. At first glance the creative careers look the lowest but you're barely at work which gives you tons of time to do your craft at home and if you're making 3-4 paintings each day (or even just on your days off) that are selling for $500 a piece, that's a pretty good chunk of change. For example, the Patron of the Arts at level 10 only works 3 days a week. Say you produce 4 paintings on each of your days off and they each sell for $400 (they vary, obviously, but who has time for variances? lol) That's an extra $6400 right there.

I haven't got my Tech Guru's high enough yet either but I have had them start making plugins and things. They were only bringing in like $70 a day in royalties but I have seen other places where people have said the royalties for the apps especially can get really lucrative. And I have had writers who were bringing in $2000-$3000 a day in royalties once they could sell to Readers Digest or whatever it's called. An extra $14,000 a week isn't too shabby. So, for my sim specifically who was at the top level of the Writing Career PLUS his royalties, his income would actually be in third place on this list.

Pretty much my thinking exactly. A well-designed system all around. Part of me wants there to be a discrepancy, though, because not all careers are created equal in real life, but as part of a game, it's probably best to make sure they're all fairly even.

An impressive piece of research.

My first reaction was that the final list was quite well balanced but when I looked at it again I decided that the difference between the top and the bottom should be much. much greater. Any painter I know, including the most successful ones (and some, though an extremely small minority, are) would be overwhelmed with joy if he could make half of what a crime boss does, To say nothing about writers. Or, gods forbid, poets.

Yes, I know it's just a game - but I do worry that some innocent soul playing it might conclude that if you make real and constant progress with your art you'll undoubtedly be well rewarded at the end.

Yea, I think the gap between the lowest paying career and the highest paying career is too small but I do think the way they have them arranged is pretty good.

And saying the gap between the lowest and highest just reminded me about the teen jobs! I'm going to add those now!

Now with teen jobs! Listed above after the adult careers.