
I took the liberty once again as I did last Thursday of gathering the most salient input from the 9 pages and creating something visual that's easy to comprehend: A chart! I started by ranking the 9 jobs by median salary. Here you go:
Rank | Job | Median Salary $ |
1 | Air Traffic Controller | 122,000 |
2 | Radiation Therapist | 77,000 |
3 | Nuclear Technician | 73,000 |
4 | Dental Hygienist | 72,000 |
5 | Funeral Service Director | 66,000 |
6 | Registered Nurse | 65,000 |
6 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tech | 65,000 |
7 | Web Developer | 62,500 |
8 | Electronics Drafter | 56,000 |
Air Traffic Controller tops the chart at a whopping $122K! That is incredible pay…so much that it makes you ask, Why are employers willing to pay so much to Air Traffic Controllers? Is it simple economics, i.e., not enough supply out there to keep airport control towers staffed, resulting in jacked-up pay to force create a market? This Yahoo answer string starts to shed some light: Why do air traffic controllers make bank?
Taking a page out of Glassdoor.com's article, I wanted to find out how many openings there are for each job. I used the job search site, Indeed, to look for current job openings (nationwide) as if I were seeking employment today. I also refined my searches so that the exact title of the job came up each time. When searches weren't clear enough, I clicked on the employer ad and made sure the offering was for the job type I was looking for, not some other one lumped in the category. Here are the 9 jobs ranked by openings found today:
Rank | Job | Openings as of 5/26/15 |
9 | Air Traffic Controller | 23 |
8 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tech | 98 |
7 | Radiation Therapist | 134 |
6 | Funeral Service Director | 148 |
5 | Electronics Drafter | 440** |
4 | Nuclear Technician | 940* |
3 | Web Developer | 1,677 |
2 | Dental Hygienist | 2,799 |
1 | Registered Nurse | 10,725 |
The highest paying job, Air Traffic Controller, has the fewest job openings nationwide. There were so few of them, I clicked on the listings and found that most of them were being offered out of Houston, TX. This wouldn't bode well for someone acquiring an associates degree in air traffic controlling who didn't live in Texas, and wanted no part of the Lone Star state. "All my Ex's live in Texas!" Speaking of Houston…let's pray that raining stops and people are okay.
I wanted to depict one last data point: Growth outlook for these careers. Not everyone is going to be done with a two-year degree in these fields come this month. Some people may just be starting out. For this data, I went back to the BLS site. According to the BLS, the average growth rate for ALL occupations is +11%. In "Job Outlook, 2012-22," the BLS projects the percent change in employment for ten years. Here are the results:
Rank | Job | Job Outlook, 2012-22 |
9 | Air Traffic Controller | 1% |
8 | Electronics Drafter | 2%* |
7 | Funeral Service Director | 12% |
6 | Nuclear Technician | 15% |
5 | Registered Nurse | 19% |
4 | Web Developer | 20% |
3 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tech | 21% |
2 | Radiation Therapist | 24% |
1 | Dental Hygienist | 33% |
The job outlook for air traffic controller for the next seven years looks dismal. Meanwhile, if you want to be in a career that will boom, Dental Hygiene is the path to take. Now let's consolidate. I will show you one last chart where I average the ranks of each career to give you the pound-for-pound best highest paying two year degree job. Here you go:
Rank | Job | Pay | Openings | Outlook | Total | Avg |
1 | Dental Hygienist | 4 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 0.26 |
2 | Radiation Therapist | 2 | 7 | 2 | 11 | 0.41 |
3 | Registered Nurse | 6 | 1 | 5 | 12 | 0.44 |
4 | Nuclear Technician | 3 | 4 | 6 | 13 | 0.48 |
5 | Web Developer | 7 | 3 | 4 | 14 | 0.52 |
6 | Funeral Service Director | 5 | 6 | 6 | 17 | 0.63 |
7 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tech | 6 | 8 | 3 | 17 | 0.63 |
8 | Air Traffic Controller | 1 | 9 | 9 | 19 | 0.7 |
9 | Electronics Drafter | 8 | 5 | 8 | 21 | 0.78 |
The clear winner, and decisively at that, is Dental Hygienist. If you don't mind the single most disgusting thing in the world, the human mouth, then being a DH is for you! You'll be cleaning teeth all day, but at least you won't be debt ridden from having undertaken a full Bachelor's degree course. You'll make excellent pay, and you will find jobs easily for the next decade almost. Teeth aren't going anywhere.
And with that…I'm off. I hope you have enjoyed dissecting the best two-year careers currently available just as much as I have. To continuously get great informative financial literacy posts, please subscribe to my blog (top left sidebar). Thanks for reading! Peace out! Carlos.
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