Quite a few of you reading this would be currently – in one way or another – preparing for a job. You might be studying for it, preparing for an upcoming interview, or already doing one job and looking for a better one. We all want the best job we can get, and most of our lives are spent upgrading our resumes, as it’s really the only way most of us make a living.
Some rare high-level jobs, though, are simply out of reach for most people, either due to the advanced level of specialization required to do them, or the high cost of messing the job up. Understandably, these also happen to be some of the highest-paid professions in the world.
8. Lawyer
While many of the professions in this list are out of reach for most people, that’s not the case with a career in law. Almost anyone with passable social skills and a bit of time to remember all of those law books could aspire to be a lawyer. However, it’s also one of those professions with an almost non-existent ceiling.
Lawyers who represent high profile cases are compensated ridiculously well, so much so that it would easily be one of the best paying professions in the world. While we’d never know exactly how much the top lawyers actually make, it could go up to $150,000 per year. The top paid law fields are medical, intellectual property and trial.
7. AI Developer
It’s no breaking news that developers are inherently paid more than other professionals, as that technology is still in its early decades. Good coders are still hard to come by, though it’s not something everyone can’t do. Almost anyone can spend a few hours online and come out with a working knowledge of coding.
However, that’s only at the most basic level. Once you go higher, you’d start to realize that computers really aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. At the top are the AI developers – some of the most coveted and skilled professionals of their field. If you somehow manage to learn the intricacies of AI – especially machine learning – you could expect to earn up to around $142,000 per year.
6. Offshore Oilrig Engineer
Offshore oil drilling machines are no one’s perfect idea of a job. The hours are basically ‘all the hours’, there’s little to do in your free time other than stare at the same expanse of the ocean, and the chances of an accident are much higher than your average job.
All of that is, of course, until you hear how much it pays. Depending on what you do and the number of years in the field, an engineer working on an offshore rig could earn up to $188,000 per year. Of course, that comes with the risk of working on a giant oil tanker in the middle of the sea, though most modern rigs are largely safe places to work at. Of course, getting one of those jobs isn’t all that easy, either, as it takes quite a few years of specialization in the field to be able to apply for one.
5. Anesthesiologist
It would come as a surprise to absolutely no one that surgeons are some of the highest paid professionals in the medical field. After all, cutting people up, fixing whatever’s wrong from the inside, and sewing them back up must be a rare and difficult skill to develop, and should be rewarded well if you ask us.
Even among surgeons, you can specialize in specific areas of the body – like the brain – and raise your potential dollar value. The highest paid surgeons, though, are anesthesiologists. They’re exactly what they sound like; specialized surgeons that administer anesthesia during procedures. Anesthesia is still a poorly understood area of medicine, and people who can reliably put patients to sleep are high in demand. On an average, an anesthesiologist can earn anywhere from $260,000 to $310,000 depending on their experience.
4. Orthodontist
The medical field has quite a few jobs that could qualify to be on this list, though we can’t include them all or it would get repetitive. Still, specialized fields like anesthesiology – something most of us don’t even know exists – deserve a mention. Another one like that is orthodontics, which deals with fixing the alignment of the teeth and jaws to improve appearance. It may not sound important, but look at the numbers, and you’d find that it’s one of the most lucrative professions around.
The median wage of an orthodontist is somewhere around $208,000, which far surpasses most other fields of medicine. Of course, that’s only the median, as it can go much higher with experience.
3. Psychiatrist
Psychiatry has always been a well-paid profession, owing to how difficult it is to do. Diagnosing problems with the human brain doesn’t just take extensive research and study during your degree, but also requires consistently keeping yourself updated with a rapidly-advancing field of modern medicine. That’s why psychiatrists are some of the highest-paid individuals around.
While the actual pay completely depends on where you practice, one report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2012 puts the mean salary for a psychiatrist at around $188,000. Of course, that’s from a while ago, as well as on average. With enough years in the field, a private psychiatrist employed at a residential facility nowadays could earn up to $300,000.
2. Actuary
Actuarial sciences may sound to be as simple as insurance, as everyday insurance agents do all the things actuaries do, only on a much more basic level. However, it’s a separate and huge branch of science, one that pays a higher salary than the median wage right off the bat.
Actuarial science is the study of risk, which can mean anything from risk to public image – like in the case of celebrities – or risk to mega corporations. Needless to say, that kind of work comes with a high price tag. Mid or senior-level actuaries are some of the most well-paid professionals in the world. Depending on the years of experience, a senior actuarial analyst could earn more than $500,000 per year, though that kind of money is restricted to corporate casualty management. Other actuarial branches, such as health insurance and pension management, could fetch you up to $423,000 and $364,000 per year, still making it one of the highest paying fields in the world.
1. Financial Advisor
We’ve all heard about the fat pay packages in the finance sector, especially for hedge fund managers. It’s undoubtedly one of the more lucrative occupations to be able to make a living in, even if a few recent cases of malpractices and mismanagement in the industry have given it a bad name.
Regardless, finance professionals still command some of the highest salaries in the world, and we’re not talking about hedge fund managers here. Truly high financial earners don’t actually take the risk of managing a portfolio themselves – unlike hedge fund managers – but advise high value individuals or huge corporate firms on how to manage their money. Of course, that sort of a thing comes with a price tag, as financial advisors can expect to earn up to $500,000 per year if they’re experienced enough. It can even go up to $900,000, which is what Deloitte pays its financial advisors – on average.