Australians have uncovered the jobs that pay six-figure salaries without requiring a college degree.
The workers were stopped on the streets of Brisbane and asked what they did for a living, how much they earned and whether they needed a degree to get one.
From government jobs to sales and trades, most respondents said they used the years they would have spent in college to advance their careers.
A young woman said she earns $130,000 as a policy director for Queensland Health despite having “barely” finished high school.
She said she skipped college and began working at a call center for the state health department when she was just 18, before rising through the ranks.
“I work on the state budget team… so I just work on budget presentations, a little bit of project management, project involvement and things like that,” he said.
A mother who helps sell fruit for Coles and Woolworths said senior horticultural jobs can earn more than $200,000.
She said the industry is “demanding young people” and those who want to earn more than six figures need to “show some initiative.”
The workers are some of the many interviewed by Forward who revealed that Australians can go against the conventional university route and still earn a well-paid salary.
Australians have revealed how they earn six-figure salaries by starting at the bottom of the corporate ladder and working their way up rather than going to university.
A man has revealed he now makes more than $250,000 a year as an insurance underwriter after starting out as a mailman.
He said he “learned the basics from scratch,” which gave him the skills to impress higher-ups when he was finally given a chance.
“I’m looking at the risks and deciding which ones are good and which ones are bad, and then we put a price on them,” he said.
His success in the industry also led to his employer paying for him to pursue a Master of Business Administration (MBA), progressing his career without incurring debt.
Tradespeople also reported making loads of money: One plumber said he makes $2,000 a week, while a tree trimmer said he made $26,000 in just one week of grueling work.
Another man, a self-employed underground coal miner, said he earns more than $300,000 a year.
One mother said she started out in a horticulture call centre and earned more than the average wage selling fruit to Coles and Woolworths.
Several of the jobs highlighted in the interviews generate incomes higher than the average Australian salary, which sits just above $98,000, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The data also revealed that the miner, who only needs to take a one-year course, earns between $120,000 and $140,000 depending on the state.
Meanwhile, the average lawyer who spends about three years in college earns between $90,000 and $110,000.
While non-university workers may appear to earn enough to buy property, analysis of PropTrack data by Finder.com.au found that it is not enough to buy a home in Sydney.
The analysis found that Australians will now need to earn $278,000 a year to buy a home in the New South Wales capital.
It also revealed that homebuyers need to earn twice as much as they did in 2020 just to be able to afford a median-priced home in all capital cities except Darwin and Melbourne.