Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Best Jobs in America

Flexo beat me to the punch on this one. But there's a new article from Money Magazine and Salary.com about the Top 50 jobs in America, with statistics on Average Salary, 10-Year Growth, Average Annual Job Openings, Stress, Flexibility, Creativity and Ease of Entry for each of the jobs.

My first job out of college is ranked in the top 15. My current job is ranked in the top 40. Let's just say that according to the national average, I'm not exactly overpaid. But these statistics are a bit misleading, since they don't take into account cost of living adjustments for your particular geographic area or quality of life. By quality of life, I mean the number of hours that you actually have to put in to earn that particular salary (i.e., your hourly wage). I have a friend in private practice who just graduated from law school and makes way more than I do, but she also puts in an extra 20 hours per week.

If you don't find your profession listed in the top 50, you can still hop on over to the salary.com salary wizard to figure out whether you're underpaid or overpaid. Just click on the drop down menu to find your particular job and the zip code for your geographic location.

Enjoy!

3 comments:

Single Ma said...

My career didn't make the list and salary.com says I'm grossly overpaid.

I guess I have a job that nobody wants so they have to pacify me with extra money to stay.

Well then! LOL

Peachy said...

I hit #17 as an engineer. I definately don't agree with software engineer's having the top job. But I guess for them, it's a dream come true. They can sit at their desks playing on the computer all day long AND get paid for it. I sent to school with many SE and I can only name one, since he was the only one I saw out of his room.

IRA said...

Single Ma - I'm sure that you're overpaid because you are a fabulous employee :-)

Gigi - LOL. So there's at least anecdotal evidence that software engineers do exist. And apparently in large numbers.