Mike English, Assistant Editor of Albuquerque Business First

If you're still wavering about your pursuit of that STEM degree, consider this: The average pay for all 28,590 people in STEM professions in Albuquerque is $76,960, compared to $31,060 for the rest of us.

Want to bump your pay even more? Then get a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) management job in engineering or architecture, where 1,270 Albuquerque residents are employed at a median salary of $144,770.

Those statistics are found in a new Bloomberg Business study called "The Unlikely Cities That Will Power the U.S. Economy." And Albuquerque is one of those cities — ranked 44th in the U.S., in fact, for the strength of its STEM-based economy. Click here to read the full article.