This sucks: Smokers earn $6K less a year

Your career could be up in smokes.

That’s the butt end of a new study that found employees who smoke cigarettes earn 17.5 percent less than their colleagues who don’t light up.

Melinda Pitts, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and co-author of the report, said that smokers make an average annual income of $27,248 annually, while nonsmokers bring home more bacon, about $33,820.

“Whether you smoke 30 or 600 cigarettes a month, the penalty is still the same,” said Pitts.

But smokers should not get too depressed. Pitts found that those who gave up the nasty habit earned higher wages than people who never smoked.

J.C. Rice

(C)ash rewards: A recent study showed that non-smokers get paid more than those who indulge in the habit. Yulia Nzaoza smokes, but notices that most of her company’s higher-income people don’t.

“There is a reward for smoking cessations. Somebody that can quit an addiction has something special about them,” says Pitts. “It shows they have more valuable characteristics.”

Workers on the street of Manhattan appeared to have no gripe with Pitts’ findings.

“People that smoke care less about their body,” said Eric Wilson, 27, a consultant at the Huxley Associates recruiting firm.

Wilson has been smoking cigarettes for a decade. He says that his high-stress job feeds into his addiction, which causes him to take three smoke breaks a day.

He adds that smokers tend to not “have enough willpower to quit, and that probably translates into their professional lives.”

Yulia Nzaoza, 35, is an assistant to the chief financial officer at the Russian Alcohol Group in New York. She notices that most of the higher-income people — especially top-level managers — don’t smoke.

The 10-year smoking veteran said, “It takes a strong character to not indulge in bad habits like smoking.”