Salary Survey Extra is a series of dispatches that give added insight into the findings of our annual Salary Survey. These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes a visual representation is just more elegant, expressive, or, evocative than even a strong writer could capture in words. It’s also the case, however, that a visual representation can be easier to understand — more readily comprehensible to the eye than paragraph after paragraph of text.

(Don’t even get us started on people who don’t use paragraphs. Have you ever tried to read or refer to an e-mail from someone like that? Use paragraphs, people. Paragraphs are your friend.)

This is a roundabout way of expressing that we’re going to turn the bulk of this week’s feature over to a massive table that we compiled using Salary Survey data about the relative contentment of certified IT professionals as regards their annual income. We examined salary satisfaction from a couple of angles last week in this space.

We’re back this week to consider what probably seems like the most obvious approach. How does salary satisfaction correspond, if at all, to income level? That is to say, are people who have a relatively high annual income figure more likely to be satisfied with that amount than people who have smaller salaries?

It’s not as cut-and-dried as you might think. Yes, people with low salaries are somewhat more likely to express dissatisfaction, and people with high salaries are somewhat more likely to be satisfied. But that doesn’t tell the whole story by any stretch. Essentially, once you get past the entry-level salary ranges, people have feelings across the spectrum.

What probably seems like a substantial income to some, isn’t quite enough to really ring the bell for others.

What we’ve done below is cross reference salary and salary satisfaction. At the far right of the table from each listed salary range is the percentage of all survey respondents whose income falls within that range. The percentage figure under each salary satisfaction column is the number of individuals who a) are in that salary bracket, and b) expressed that level of salary satisfaction, as a percentage of all survey respondents.

Clear as mud? Just keep reminding yourself that a picture (or, in this case, a table) is easier to digest than many paragraphs of text, and be glad that we took the time to do it this way. (Because, hoo boy, did it take some time to do it this way.) Oh, and this is just the reckoning for U.S. survey respondents. If we’re feeling really energetic some other week, we’ll do the same for non-U.S. respondents.

Salary Satisfaction Cross Referenced with Annual Income — All U.S. Survey Respondents