Salary
Average Salary: $35,000
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $1,461,180
Let's get into the whole reason you apply to the DMV in the first place: your love of meeting new people. Just kidding—you need the cash.
While the amount you can hope for depends very much on the department in which you work, the typical DMV employee earns around $35,000 a year (source). This means that, in general, you're going to be earning much less than the smelly guy spitting his grief at you.
As you gain more experience and responsibilities, you'll also start getting more cash. Once you get up to supervisor and manager level, you should be able to blast past that $35,000 average and start making some real dough—if you don't split for greener pastures, of course.
One way to make some extra cash is to land a specialty position. For instance, field investigators in California average $50,000 (source), while DMV IT professionals in Nevada make over $80,000 (source). For these kinds of jobs you'll need a degree, but student loans can be manageable when you're pulling in this kind of money.
The biggest reason to work a government job like this is the benefits. Take the great state of New York as a model. Health care, paid sick leave, paid vacation, pension, wellness, disability, tuition assistance (take that, Starbucks), and life services are all just a portion of the sweet benefits you'd get as an employee of the NY DMV. Work there long enough, they'll probably throw in a cotton candy machine and a private bouncy castle.
One can dream, anyway.