Fred Harteis News Articles - America's Best and Worst Paying Jobs

Fred Harteis News Articles - Why do financially pushy parents want their children to marry doctors? Because, as Willie Sutton said of banks, that is where the money is.

The medical profession dominates the top end of our list of the 25 best and worst paying jobs. Surgeons are No. 1, with the next seven spots taken by various sorts of specialist practitioners. Chief executives, at No. 9, and airline pilots, at No. 13, are the only two nonmedical occupations in the top 15. At the other end of the scale are jobs in hotels, restaurants and leisure businesses. Lowest paid of all? Fast-food cooks, followed by busboys, dishwashers and waiters.

According to government data, the mean annual salary for 55,390 surgeons is $181,850; for a fast-food cook, $15,230. The mean annual pay for all jobs is $37,440.

Our numbers are drawn from the government's National, State and Metropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. They, in turn, are based on a national survey of employers (the latest available one is from 2004) of every size and in all industry sectors. They cover 800 occupations.

The survey covers full- and part-time workers who are paid a wage or salary. It does not include the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, household workers and unpaid family workers.

It asks about basic pay, incentive bonuses and commissions, but not overtime pay or non-wage compensation, such as stock options. That all helps explain why mean annual wages appear lower than one might have expected at the top end and higher at the bottom, where undocumented workers are unlikely to be counted accurately.

Remember, too, that these are mean salaries and that they give no indication of how distant the outliers at either end of the salary scale for any occupation might be. There are plenty of lawyers that earn a lot more than $110,590, and surely there are dishwashers who earn a lot less than $15,670.

Earnings can vary widely for the same job in different industries and in different places. Farm workers and nurserymen who work for the federal government, for example, earn almost twice the average for the occupation. Ditto laundry and dry-cleaning workers.

Click here to see the top 25 paying jobs

Source: Aol.com

About Fred Harteis: Fred Harteis leads Harteis International. Fred Harteis has a background in agriculture and has created many successful business ventures.