Highest Paying Jobs Across All Industries List
Hey guys, for fun, I've made a close-to-comprehensive list of the different roles and professions of each industry that pay well and that prospective students may be looking into. I need your help to make it fully comprehensive.
The list has 3 key criteria:
1) The career must have the ability to consistently lead to 400k all-in compensation
This rule is the reason most forms of engineering (civil, chemical, mechanical and electrical.) aren't on the list. I've asked around on different forums and to different people and most agree that earning 400k requires owning a company or being at the very top of upper management sometimes even at C-level.
2) The career must provide long-term aspects
This rule means that professional sports or PMCs aren't on the list
3) There must be a clear path to obtaining said career
Things like actors, musicians, performers, entrepreneurship or high up political roles are excluded because of this.
Though this rule doesn't affect jobs where making partner or climbing the corporate ladder is vital as there is still a clear-cut path to doing this it's just that the success rate is fairly low. For example, making partner at a law firm has many different guides on how to accomplish this such as billing a certain amount of hours, building a book of clients, etc as well as lateralling to different firms which gives a fair chance of making partner. This isn't the same for an aspiring actor or musician.
I'd like to hear what you guys think I should add to this list. There are two main sections. The blue section is non-STEM related jobs and scroll down to get to the red section (STEM related jobs).
I've shortened the medical section to keep it brief as all medical careers pass the criteria.
While I have a bit more knowledge on finance, law, business and O&G related roles, I feel I'm missing some roles on the tech and data side if anyone could help me with that. As well as any other small, niche roles I may have missed or overlooked. Looking forward to hearing from everyone.
Your Real Estate Sales section is off. Real Estate Sales can be broken down into:
Residential: Residential sales, Mortgage banking/ brokering
Commercial: Leasing, Investment Sales, Debt/ Equity Placement
I thought i got something wrong there. So I should move CRE brokerage from finance to the RE sales and specify RE sales includes both commercial and residential right? I'm trying to keep the list not too specific.
I would put Real Estate Finance under the finance tab. This will include REPE, REIT, RE Banking, and Development (Dev could be argued but good enough for your purposes).
Then I would just add a "Sales" tab up top. Add in: CRE Investment Sales, CRE Debt/ Equity Placement, Residential Sales, Residential Mortgage Banking.
Under sales I would also put: Medical equipment sales, lab testing sales (personally know someone who cleared $600k annually from that), and even car sales. Car sales is weird because of the variance in earnings.. but owning a dealership franchise can be super lucrative.
Highly unlikely actuaries would meet your $400k+ requirement. It is possible if you become a Chief Actuary, but that is a C-Suite position usually only available at insurance companies and the like. Due to the small nature of companies with this position I would say it neither meets the compensation nor defined path requirements you laid out. The same goes for data scientists; unless you are working for one of the large tech firms or somewhere else that pays equally well, breaking $400k for most is unlikely, not to mention the fact that the field is beginning to get saturated.
Realized the error with actuaries I will add a sidenote/change it tomorrow. I honestly thought actuaries earned more on average.
Checked out some more websites and realized breaking 400k as an actuary is extremely rare It's odd how actuaries are always seen as "smarter accountants" but I didnt realize the much higher ceilings that auditors have. Equity partners at the big 4 make serious bank so I assumed that since the consensus was actuarial science pays more than auditing that actuaries also make comparable money at the later stages of their careers.
As for data scientists, that is true that only certain top firms (FAMGA) will pay them well but the same could be said for software engineering, audit and management consulting. Apart from the top consulting firms, breaking 400k will be pretty difficult. Same for auditing, if you're not in the Big 4 chances are you wouldn't be making more than 400k either. The chances of getting into these firms is smaller since theres only a few compared to law for example where theres 50-100 firms that pay well but I'm going to include these jobs since they still heavily recruit from top schooks and if one is dedicated and networks enough he could get into these top firms.
Though I will give it to you that I have heard that the market is getting saturated I guess we'll see if theres a downturn in salaries.
I suppose, although getting a job at FAMGA is more like getting a job at MBB than Big 4. Big 4 is fairly easy to get into with decent grades, and one can slowly but surely work up to partner (which is not hard as long as you don't suck and don't burnout). Most people will never make it into MBB or FAMGA which I would say is the biggest barrier and issue as far as your consistency requirements are concerned. The same could be said for IB, although with hard work it's usually possible to eventually break in, since even at small firms $400k+ is possible; can't say that I have seen the same from those applying to MBB and FAMGA, because even with hard work the top companies pay far better than everyone else, and there are so few of them.
And as a side note to actuaries, their work life balance is generally very good, and career progression is pretty standardized. Due to this and the nature of the work it typically attracts people that are fairly risk averse. And we all know the less risky something is, the less possibility for a higher return, which is why it feels their late career salaries are lower than they might be for other careers.
Would add plastic surgeon to medical
That's included in the "Any medical doctor" part
Could probably add high-end Chiropractors
I have multiple friends that are VPs of analytics in companies you have heard - in major cities like LA, SF, Chicago, NY, Toronto - none of them break 400k.
When you say VP of analytics you mean the end point of a data scientist correct?
No, that would be a Chief Data Scientist or Chief Data Officer. I like what you're building here though so let me try to add some value. From the outside and for a preliminary list it's fair to think analytics = data science, super common.
Analytics can be broken down into multiple streams because, let's be real, you can analyze pretty much anything. Some analytics requires sophisticated techniques and others more basic (you can guess which is more lucrative). Analytics for a big data company is going to look a lot different than a marketing agency, right? Machine learning or data science is considerably different than, say, marketing analytics. Some overlap but generally different skill set.
In case anyone was wondering, the skill set difference looks something like this, although it's not exhaustive: Data science: Requires a thorough understanding of data visualization, databases and database architecture, statistics, modeling, programming languages, etc Marketing analytics: Requires a thorough understanding of data visualization, CRM software, customer touchpoints, prospecting methods, vendor technology, etc.
this is missing a tonne of nuance.. but that's ok because I'm working on a better one ;)
I got some competition now, that'll make this more fun.
That is true though, I'm not aiming for it to be extremely precise it's more just broad roles of different industries though if you see any missing please tell me.
Also, once you're done working on yours I'd love to see it!
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Any jobs I may have missed? I cant seem to think of anymore though I'd like to see what you guys think!
So far I've:
Changed where actuary stands on my list (Thank you Liam Gallagher )
Fixed up commercial real estate and real estate sales (Thank you @SponsorPromote" )
Will add other business roles, HR for example soon (Thank you princepieman )
Missed out most other business functions.. There are VPs of HR making $400-500k.
Thanks, I knew I was forgetting something in the corporate world. I gotta do a bit more research in this area as I'm pretty sure many corporate roles could earn 400k+ at director/VP level.
Cell C1 should be changed to fit the roles under it. Real Estate Sales has nothing to do with audit or corporate strategy.
Under Entertainment: Packaging agent (different from talent agent, more akin to a finance role for entertainment), Producers (not just the big movies. Guys you’ve never heard of who produce commercials can easily take in over $400k).
If you felt so inclined you could break down the types of attorneys into smaller categories.
Random: People at In N Out. It’s a not so hidden secret that store managers take in over $150k. Regional directors and such clear $300k. Above that can clear $400k.
I have honestly no idea what happened to Cell C1, it originally said "professional services/business" must've screwed that up when changing the real estate jobs. Thanks for notifying me though.
Entertainment has had roles added, thanks. Could film directors be put on this list as well or are they on the same tier as actors where they aren't employed permanently but rather a movie studio will seek you out?
I'll most likely keep law together as there are just so many types of lawyers who all earn a lot much like the different medical specializations.
As for in-n-out managers, I've never even considered the food service industry, will look more into it.
Thanks for the suggestions!
There are tons of sales positions that can consistently get you $400k+, not just real estate & finance.
Scroll down to the STEM-related areas (in red). That's where a lot of the sales jobs are.
Yeah, but the chances of anyone making that much at a "sales job" is like .0001%.
Pipe-dream.
Not necessarily. If you browse reddit, theres a sales subreddit and a lot of the guys in software and pharma rake in 300-400k Difficult and rare for sure but surely not as hard as you say.
Nonsense. I know sales isn't "sexy" on this site, but people always vastly underestimate the earning potential.
> Yeah, but the chances of anyone making that much at a "sales job" is like .0001%.
You should look into pharma sales...
highly disagree.... i work in a "sales" job and the we dont have a guy making under 250k on this desk of 6 and 2 making over a million
In tech: - Sales - Senior Data Scientists - Senior ML and AI Scientists / Engineers - Big Data architects
Though keep in mind that the high-paying jobs in the above fields are usually also located in high-COL areas.
Many medical professions will also bring in $300k-$500k, without having to reach management or c-level positions. But you also have quite specialized skills, and probably decades or education / training.
Like with investments, return follows risk. I think the medical field must be one of the very few fields where you essentially have a never-ending supply of clients / customers willing to pay you whatever, and the only thing holding you back is the number of hours in a day - it's kind of self-regulated by the difficulty and lengthiness of becoming a doctor and specialist.
Agreed; however, I wonder how much longer Doctor's and the like will continue getting paid what they get paid. I think tech improvements within the healthcare industry will start eating into Doctor's salaries pretty quick here. It's only a matter of time until you only need half the Doctor's you need today.
delete
+SB cause I like listing things as well. Nice list don't have any current suggestions.
This theads about finished so last comment if anyone has anymore suggestions? Thanks for all the people that contributed helped develop the list a lot!
Power 5 football coaches (even assistants).
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No software sales??
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