KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s often said someone makes money even in a bad economy.

Cody Bass just didn’t know how much.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” the 22-year-old college senior said.

That’s the annual salary that Bass — who is still a semester away from receiving his bachelor’s degree from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla — is to be paid for his first job out of college.

That, he said, doesn’t even include the $7,500 he’ll be given in moving expenses. Or the $20,000 he’s getting upfront as an early signing bonus. Or the $25,000 “impact bonuses” he said he was told to expect for each of the first two years he is on the job.

Total package for his first year in his first real job: $145,000-plus.

“I was shocked,” Bass said.

But such are the rewards of picking the right college major even in these shaky economic times.

For Bass, that is petroleum engineering, a job for which starting salaries in the expanding business now average $85,000 to $95,000, with offers often coming a year or more before the end of college.

Whereas workers in some industries are being laid off by the thousands, in others — such as engineering, accounting, nursing, pharmacy and, as the cost of shipping by truck has risen, railroads — the watchword is “hired,” not “fired,” as new employees are being promised high-paying jobs sometimes more than a year before graduation.

ACCOUNTING: Nationwide, college accounting programs are booming, filled to capacity, growing and taking on more faculty.

“As it turns out, accounting is rather resilient in good and bad times,” said Steve Limberg, director of the master’s of accounting program at the University of Texas, Austin, one of the premier programs in the nation. “In good times, people want to know how to manage their prosperity. In bad, they want to know how to manage their cost saving.”

At schools including the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, the job placement rates for accountants before graduation now range between 95 percent and 100 percent.

Some students, such as Kansas State fifth-year senior Jessalyn Dean, 23, are receiving full-time job offers as much as 18 months before graduation. First-year salaries frequently are $45,000 and up.

NURSING: “You’re going to get a job, a good job with almost guaranteed lifelong job security,” said Karen Miller, senior vice chancellor and dean of the University of Kansas School of Nursing.

Starting salaries with a four-year nursing degree: About $50,000. The reason is the aging population. The job situation is similar for the other allied health professions, including occupational or physical therapy.

PHARMACY: Becoming a pharmacist requires an advanced degree. But, again, the aging population has resulted in a nationwide shortage in pharmacists. That has caused first-time salaries to bulge well into the six figures.

Beyond offering high salaries, some companies, he said, are wooing young pharmacists with offers to pay off their student loans.

RAILROADS: Conductors, brakemen, electricians, signalmen, locomotive engineers, track workers: all are in high demand in the railroad industry, which in recent years has started booming again as gas prices have risen and the industry itself has experienced a number of retirements.

Over the entire industry, the call is to hire some 40,000 new railroad employees over the next six years, according to the Association of American Railroads.