Medical Professions Dominate CareerCast's List of Highest Paying Jobs
Surgeon, Psychiatrist and Physician Are the Most Lucrative Professions
CARLSBAD, Calif., Aug. 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Skilled healthcare professions dominate CareerCast's 2015 list of the highest paying jobs, with surgeon, psychiatrist and physician rounding out the top three. Other medical careers that landed in the Top 10 are dentist, orthodontist and pharmacist. Corporate executives, petroleum engineers and data scientists were the only careers outside of medicine to make the Top 10 best paid jobs. The Top 10 list was culled from the 200 jobs included in CareerCast's annual Jobs Rated report.
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These skilled healthcare professions require very specialized knowledge, hence the attractive salaries. However, many lucrative medical careers require postgraduate studies for varying lengths of time. Residency programs for surgeons and physicians can last up to 10 years. And, the debt accrued over an aspiring surgeon, physician, psychiatrist, dentist, pharmacist or orthodontist's time in school can be astronomical. These healthcare professionals can log somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 in student loan debt before seeing any of the handsome salaries listed here.
Litigation also fuels the high salaries that those in the medical professions earn. Surgeons also face exponentially higher risk of malpractice lawsuits than other medical fields, a New England Journal of Medicine study found.
Not all of the highest paying jobs of 2015 require quite as much schooling. The BLS reports petroleum engineer, for example, only requires a bachelor's degree and pays an annual median wage of $130,050.
The following are 10 of the best paying jobs of 2015, per the CareerCast.com Jobs Rated report. Annual median wages are culled from the BLS and CareerCast methodology. Growth outlook is tracked over a 10-year span from 2012 through 2022 by the BLS.
- SURGEON
Annual Median Wage: $352,220
Growth Outlook: 18% - PSYCHIATRIST
Annual Median Wage: $181,880
Growth Outlook: 18% - PHYSICIAN (GENERAL PRACTICE)
Annual Median Wage: $180,180
Growth Outlook: 18% - CORPORATE EXECUTIVE (SENIOR LEVEL)
Annual Median Wage: $173,320
Growth Outlook: 11% - DENTIST
Annual Median Wage: $146,340
Growth Outlook: 16% - PETROLEUM ENGINEER
Annual Median Wage: $130,050
Growth Outlook: 26% - ORTHODONTIST
Annual Median Wage: $129,110
Growth Outlook: 16% - DATA SCIENTIST
Annual Median Wage: $124,150
Growth Outlook: 15%* - AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
Annual Median Wage: $122,340
Growth Outlook: 1% - PHARMACIST
Annual Median Wage: $120,950
Growth Outlook: 14%
* denotes percentage calculated from various sources.
About CareerCast.com
CareerCast.com, created by Adicio, is a job search portal that offers extensive local, niche and national job listings from across North America; job-hunting, career-management and HR-focused editorial content; and videos and blogs; and provides recruiters with the ability to post jobs directly to more than 800 niche career sites. CareerCast.com also compiles the Jobs Rated Report (www.jobsrated.com), where 200 jobs across North America are ranked based on detailed analysis of specific careers factors. The Jobs Rated Report has been published for 25 years.
Editor's Note:
This material may be published with a link to http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/highest-paying-jobs-2015
Media Contact:
Beth Brody, Brody PR
609-397-3737
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SOURCE CareerCast
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