Lifetime Earnings Forecast

Year-by-year annual earnings projections, peer baselines, and uncertainty—built to be readable, cohort-fair, and transparent.

Annual Earnings Trajectory

Primary chart shows annual earnings over time; lifetime totals derive from the annual path.

Ages —
You (annual) Peer median (same‑age peers) Uncertainty band (you)
You = projection from your inputs. Peer = median earnings path of same‑age peers in comparable career fields (not an uninterrupted professional benchmark).
Copies inputs + key outputs. No popups.

What you’re seeing

The chart compares your annual earnings path to a peer baseline for the same age and career field. The shaded region shows uncertainty for your annual earnings (wider early-career, narrower later).

Nothing is drawn until you generate. Hover the chart to compare annual values at each age.

How the peer baseline works

A peer is a “typical” person of the same age and career field using default assumptions (standard hours, balanced role focus, typical experience progression).

Peer comparisons and percentiles are based on cumulative lifetime earnings, derived from annual earnings.

Benchmarks

Generate a forecast to see anchors, curve shape, milestones, and peer assumptions.

This panel explains the concrete values used to form the peer baseline and your wage anchor.

Milestones

Career start, peak earnings, and retirement markers appear after generation for both trajectories.

Hover the chart for annual earnings and differences at any age.

Data vintage & update policy
Wage anchors and peer baselines are grounded in the most recent BLS OEWS annual release available at build time: May 2024 OEWS (released Apr 2, 2025). This app runs fully in-browser; it does not automatically fetch new wage tables at runtime.
To keep numbers up-to-date, update anchors when BLS publishes a new OEWS vintage (typically annually) and verify methodology notes.
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)
Wage anchors by occupation group (used here as an approximation for career field). This site uses representative medians and broad group mappings rather than a precise SOC code selection.
BLS Current Population Survey (CPS)
Age–earnings patterns (used to shape a realistic “earnings over age” curve). The model uses a smoothed, bounded curve inspired by typical lifecycle earnings profiles.
Model overview (plain English)
This forecast projects annual earnings from your current age through retirement, then sums them to compute lifetime earnings. It is a coherent, bounded model—not a guarantee.
  • Wage anchor: A starting annual wage is estimated from your career field and education level (inspired by OEWS group medians).
  • Calibration (optional): If you enter current annual income, the projection scales the entire annual path so your first working year matches that value.
  • Age-based growth curve: Earnings rise faster early-career, approach a peak, then stabilize (inspired by CPS-like lifecycle patterns).
  • Role, hours, experience: These make modest adjustments to growth and level. Caps prevent unrealistic domination by any single input.
  • Students: College/Graduate inputs (GPA and school tier) only affect early-career. Years with hours/week = 0 are modeled as $0 earnings.
Uncertainty, percentiles, and peer baseline
The shaded band is an uncertainty range around your annual earnings. It is wider early-career and narrows with age. Percentiles are estimated using a simple distribution calibrated so the band corresponds to selected percentiles.
  • Peer baseline: A typical person of the same age and career field using default assumptions.
  • Peer percentile: Computed from cumulative lifetime earnings (your total vs a calibrated peer distribution).
  • Important: Mapping “career field” to OEWS occupation groups is an approximation, not a precise occupational code selection.
Lifestyle tiers (stated rule)
Lifestyle is derived from a simple, stated rule:
  • Pre-retirement sustainable spend: ~70% of annual earnings (a rough after-savings, after-tax proxy).
  • Savings accumulation: A fixed savings rate applied to earnings builds a notional retirement portfolio.
  • Retirement spend: A 4% rule applied to that portfolio (a simplified heuristic, not advice).
The label (Basic / Comfortable / Affluent) is assigned from the modeled sustainable annual spend levels.

Lifetime earnings total

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Cumulative sum of projected annual earnings.

Peer percentile (lifetime)

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Based on cumulative lifetime earnings vs. a calibrated distribution.

Lifestyle snapshot (career-average)

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Derived from a stated sustainable-spend rule and savings assumptions.

Comparison callout

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Projected lifetime difference relative to peers is computed from the annual trajectories.