Best And Worst Paying Jobs

Best And Worst Paying Jobs - People’s career choices should be based on passion over paychecks-and that’s especially true for those who are educating America’s youth. But even if you’re pursuing a profession in education for the all right reasons-a desire to enrich the lives of students, you value the intangible rewards, you strive to give back to society and make a difference, etc.-you still have to wonder which are the highest- and lowest-paying positions in the field. And that’s not a bad thing, says Beverly Hardcastle Stanford, professor emeritus at Azusa Pacific University and co-author of Becoming a Teacher.


“People planning to go into education shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting to know which jobs or which states pay the best, because it is important to know that” she says. “But they should never base their decision to pursue, or not to pursue a job in education on the money. You need a better reason, like because you love kids and you want to make a difference in their lives. Those who work doing something they find meaningful get much more satisfaction than those who work for money. Teachers can change lives and it can be extremely rewarding.”

Forbes sifted through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates to find the very best- and worst-paying education jobs in America. The BLS survey, which reflects May 2011 salary and employment data, calculates annual pay by multiplying an hourly mean wage by a “year-round, full-time” 2,080 hours. For those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. These estimates are calculated with data collected from employers in all industry sectors for over 800 occupations.

We looked at the wage estimates for all 61 jobs in the Education, Training, and Library Occupations group to determine the highest- and lowest-paying positions.

It turns out most of the well-paying positions are postsecondary teaching jobs, for which a master’s degree or PhD is usually required. The lower-paying jobs tend to include those involving younger children or positions outside of the classroom. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t rewarding.