25 Highest Paying Jobs Most in Demand Now, With Education Factored

I’ve seen and read a slew of articles the past few days relating to the job market for college graduates.  Some, like Money’s online Family Finance page, present a Goldilocks and the Three Bears (“Just right”) edition of this ongoing saga with the headline: How New College Grads Can Beat the Tough Job Market.  Meanwhile, at the Boston Globe, the take is that everyone is soon to live happily ever after, as the headline, For New College Grads, Job Market is best in a Decade, implies.  The Money piece by Dan Kadlec resonated with me much more than the viewpoint shared by Megan Woolhouse at the Boston Globe.  In particular, the last two paragraphs where Mr. Kadlec discusses the merit of getting an internship as a way to land a job, calling it, “smart planning.”

I have some more “smart planning” in store for you all today.  It involves an article from February of this year posted by Glassdoor.com Blog and titled, 25 Highest Paying Jobs in Demand.  Reading the article on Browse mode will not do it justice.  Most people will just scroll from the top of the page down to the end and say something like, “How interesting…I should’ve been a Doctor.”  From the look of it, it does seem that being a Physician is the way to go, since it earned pole position.  Glassdoor.com could’ve done better with the information it gleaned from its study, visually, that is.  Before we move forward, you should take the time to read about the methodology at the bottom of the article.

Being a science major and educator, I thought I could show you something even more interesting given the same data.  Why would I bother?  Helping future and current undergraduates, as well as people currently searching for a job, was my motivation.  Glassdoor.com has given us valuable insight, and someone needs to decipher it with a social scientist lens…why not me?  So here it goes.

First I created a chart on Excel ranking these 25 highest, most in demand jobs, by average base salary.  Behold:

Table 1

Rank	Job	Openings	AvgBaseSalary $
1	Physician	7984	212270
2	Pharmacy Manager	1787	131099
3	Software Architect	3229	130891
4	Software Dev. Manager	2249	123747
5	Finance Manager	9224	123534
6	Solutions Architect	3530	121522
7	Lawyer	5520	120424
8	Analytics Manager	1408	115725
9	IT Manager	17161	115642
10	Tax Manager	3622	114966
11	Pharmacist	9160	114715
12	Product Manager	9918	113959
13	Physician Assistant	43678	110871
14	Supply Chain Manager	1667	106632
15	Data Scientist	3433	105395
16	Security Engineer	2060	102749
17	QA Manager	1689	101330
18	Computer Hardware Eng	1264	101154
19	Marketing Manager	14179	100229
20	Database Administrator	9041	97258
21	UX Designer	2010	96855
22	Human Resource Mgr	7220	96406
23	Software Engineer	99055	96392
24	Business Dev Manager	11037	95139
25	Sales Engineer	5508	90899

 

As you can see all of these jobs pay greater than 90K, with Physician at number one ($212,270).  But now let’s bring “Number of job openings,” into focus:

Table 2

Rank	Job	Openings	AvgBaseSalary $
1	Software Engineer	99055	96392
2	Physician Assistant	43678	110871
3	IT Manager	17161	115642
4	Marketing Manager	14179	100229
5	Business Dev Manager	11037	95139
6	Product Manager	9918	113959
7	Finance Manager	9224	123534
8	Pharmacist	9160	114715
9	Database Administrator	9041	97258
10	Physician	7984	212270
11	Human Resource Mgr	7220	96406
12	Lawyer	5520	120424
13	Sales Engineer	5508	90899
14	Tax Manager	3622	114966
15	Solutions Architect	3530	121522
16	Data Scientist	3433	105395
17	Software Architect	3229	130891
18	Software Dev. Manager	2249	123747
19	Security Engineer	2060	102749
20	UX Designer	2010	96855
21	Pharmacy Manager	1787	131099
22	QA Manager	1689	101330
23	Supply Chain Manager	1667	106632
24	Analytics Manager	1408	115725
25	Computer Hardware Eng	1264	101154

Physician, at number 10, with 7,984 job openings, suddenly doesn’t look untouchable.  Someone just looking at Table 2 would say the way to financial security begins with a major in Software Engineering—nice pay at $96,392 and plenty of current job openings at 99,055.  Our work is done, right?  Not so fast!  If you are seriously concerned with “smart planning,” you would also want to know at minimum one last thing, education.  How much would someone in these professions need to be “educated,” meaning, how much college do you need to do as a requirement of these jobs?

It wasn’t easy, but I searched for education requirements for all 25 jobs listed here.  I used, Study.com for most of my findings, and when I was in doubt, I also visited the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This is what I came up with:

Table 3

Job	Entry-Level Education
Physician	Doctor of Medicine
Pharmacy Manager	Doctor of Pharmacy
Software Architect	Bachelor's
Software Dev. Manager	Bachelor's/Masters
Finance Manager	Bachelor's/Masters
Solutions Architect	Bachelor's
Lawyer	Juris Doctor
Analytics Manager	Bachelor's/Masters
IT Manager	Bachelor's/Masters
Tax Manager	Bachelor's
Pharmacist	Doctor of Pharmacy
Product Manager	Bachelor's
Physician Assistant	Masters
Supply Chain Manager	Certificate/Bachelor's
Data Scientist	Bachelor's/Masters
Security Engineer	Bachelor's
QA Manager	Bachelor's
Computer Hardware Eng	Bachelor's
Marketing Manager	Bachelor's
Database Administrator	Bachelor's
UX Designer	Certificate/Bachelor's
Human Resource Mgr	Bachelor's/Masters
Software Engineer	Bachelor's
Business Dev Manager	Certificate/Bachelor's
Sales Engineer	Bachelor's

  

Let me describe each “Entry-Level Education” description as written about at Study.com.

1. Certificate/Bachelor’s: Jobs where a student could take courses at a technical school, earning a certificate or also apply a Bachelor’s degree to land this job.  In other words, a Bachelor’s is recommended, but not required.

2. Bachelor’s: A minimum requirement of a Bachelor’s for the job.

3. Bachelor’s/Masters: A job with a Bachelor’s requirement, but a Masters recommended.

4. Masters: A minimum requirement of a Masters for the job.

5. Doctor’s: The highest possible degree is a requirement for the given job.

Then I did something fancy.  I wanted to rank these same 25 jobs with all three column headings (pay, openings, and education) in consideration.  Why?  To show you what are the current 25 top paying jobs with the most openings AND factoring in education.  In order to rank the jobs using a scale I assigned a total value of 25 for pay, 25 for openings, and 50 for education.  A Physician, for example, gets a score of 1 (pay) + 10 (openings) or 11/50 IF we just looked at Table 1 and Table 2.  Since there were 5 entry-level education descriptions, I assigned any job requiring a Certificate/Bachelor’s 10 points, while jobs requiring a Bachelor’s were given 20 points, and so on.  In this case, more point is a BAD thing.  I think we can all agree that money aside, more education is always better.  But this being a fin blog, and providing money sense being a prime directive of this blogger, more college education will always mean more debt, unfortunately.  Now how do the top 25 highest paying, most in demand jobs, stack up?  Behold:

Rank	Job	Pay	Openings	Edu	Total (100 max)	Avg.
1	Product Manager	12	6	20	38	0.38
2	Business Dev Manager	24	5	10	39	0.39
3	Software Architect	3	17	20	40	0.4
4	Solutions Architect	6	15	20	41	0.41
5	Finance Manager	5	7	30	42	0.42
5	Analytics Manager	8	24	30	62	0.42
5	IT Manager	9	3	30	42	0.42
6	Marketing Manager	19	4	20	43	0.43
7	Tax Manager	10	14	20	44	0.44
7	Software Engineer	23	1	20	44	0.44
8	Supply Chain Manager	14	23	10	47	0.47
9	Database Administrator	20	9	20	49	0.49
10	UX Designer	21	20	10	51	0.51
11	Software Dev. Manager	4	18	30	52	0.52
12	Physician Assistant	13	2	40	55	0.55
12	Security Engineer	16	19	20	55	0.55
13	QA Manager	17	20	20	57	0.57
14	Sales Engineer	25	13	20	58	0.58
15	Physician	1	10	50	61	0.61
15	Data Scientist	15	16	30	61	0.61
16	Computer Hardware Eng	18	25	20	63	0.63
16	Human Resource Mgr	22	11	30	63	0.63
17	Lawyer	7	12	50	69	0.69
17	Pharmacist	11	8	50	69	0.69
18	Pharmacy Manager	2	21	50	73	0.73

And the winner is…Product Manager!  Martin Eriksson tells you what exactly is a product manager in the most lucid way online.

You can see now that Physician dropped all the way to number 15.  Sure it’s great pay, and there are always openings, but the education that is required is sure to leave you debt ridden.  However, since the pay is high, if a new Doctor can keep from buying a boat in the first ten years on the job, they should be able to rid themselves of their college loans in no time, i.e., by living within their means.  For me, the job of a Physician is the only one I would not hesitate to recommend to a high school student, given our economy.  All others come with “ifs” and “buts.”  Students who are considering law and pharmacy, BUYER BEWARE!

This has been another installment of Common Core Money blog, and if you liked what you just read then you should rank me number one and Subscribe to this blog!  Thanks for reading!