CNNMoney published a handy
list of the 100 best jobs in America that's worth looking at. You can check out the main list to see the overall greatest career, or browse by industry or specific categories, like salary, satisfaction, and stress-levels.
Some highlights:
- The top job overall was Systems Engineer, i.e. a project leader in the information technology sector that works on big-deal stuff in all sorts of industries, from car companies to city transit authorities. According to CNN, the greatest parts of the job are the creativity, leadership, and the six-figure salary.
- Doctors dominated the top three spots on the list of the highest paying jobs—no surprise there—with Anesthesiologists coming in first with a median earnings of $292,000. Anesthesiologist and Nurse Anesthetist were also the top two jobs under the personal satisfaction category. Apparently putting people to sleep is a good business to be in.
- The top three careers with the lowest stress: Education/Training Consult (those people companies bring in to talk to their employees), Physical Therapist, and College Professor.
- The highest growing occupation is the Telecommunications Network Engineer, the dudes in charge of creating and maintaining systems for phone, cable, and wi-fi networks, with an eye toward sustainability. Analysts foresee a 53 percent growth in the field between 2006 and 2016; our friend the Systems Engineer came in second with a 45 percent projected growth.
Overall, the list was pretty thorough, although if
I were ranking jobs, I'd include a separate category for green jobs—CNN did have a section ranking occupations by their "benefit to society," but that seems a little vague.
What's do you look for most in a job—salary, security, low-stress? What's your dream career?
Comments (4)
Pharmacist or Philosophy Professor. Yes, quite at ends of the spectrum, but they are right next to each other alphabetically on the list of majors on my college website.
My dream career is to be a private investigator...but as I can't afford criminal justice college, nor the trip lor supplies needed to travel to michigan and practice for the amount of hours in order to get a license here in Ohio...
Housekeeper looks like the steadiest job for me, probably the most peaceful one I could ask for that still requires a decent chunk of physical activity.
Lately I've just been doing odd jobs with art, cleaning, and farming, and writing, but I'm hoping to do odd jobs babysitting, plantsitting, housesitting, etc.
I've been seriously considering going back to school to become an Anesthesiologist.
How much I owe right now will be a speck of dust compared to how much I will owe once I graduate. Not quite sure yet if I will do it yet.
Funny, I know both an anaesthesiologist and a systems engineer, and neither of them seem particularly happy with their jobs.