Economist Earnings

Last night, I wrote this post about economist wages and linked to this Wall Street Journal article. The article had some surprising figures in it regarding the pay of economists. The one that surprised me the most, as well as some commenters to my original post, was the following passage quoted below:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, salaries for economics teachers, a category that includes professors, averaged nearly $140,000 a year -- based on a 52-week year -- in 2003, making it one of the highest-paid professions that the government tracks.

I'm not sure where this $140,000 comes from. According to this page at the Bureau of Labor Statistics web page, the average post secondary economics teacher earned, on average, $72,300 (based on 2,080 hours worked for a full year [52*40]). According to the Occupational Outlook Quarterly from Winter 2002-2003, the average post-secondary economist earned $62,820 in 2001 (page 10 of the pdf document, bottom right-hand corner).