I mean regular profession - attainable by most smart people after a few years of training, not a titled position like CEO, which few can attain through just sheer hard work.
After I heard about a radiologist getting offered 1 million a year for a job (which I found hard to believe) I looked up the salaries of radiologists, and sure enough the upper end seems to be around $600,000?? Can you think of any other regular job that pays that much? I’m not talking about “making partner” at a law firm or owning a business or being a famous actor or an athlete. This is work for hire I’m talking about.
Why would anyone want to be a general practitioner with all the hassles of running a business, if you can make that kind of money working for an institution interpreting scans?
Because there are only so many Radiology residency spots available to train in, some docs don’t like working all day in dark, windowless rooms, interpreting shadows, sticking needles into people and pouring barium into every available orifice, and don’t like to dictate reports which read, in their entirety “Scan normal, cannot rule out abnormal. Suggest clinical correlation”.
To expand some on Qadgop’s reply, perhaps a bit of the answer is a quality of life concern. What do you want to be doing all day? I suppose I could make more money, but I make enough and I like what I do.
As far as the highest salaried positions, well, I am a bit agog at what radiologists might possibly make.
Any “job” that pays very high wages is likely to have fairly rigorous self selecting criteria involving intelligence (of whatever type necessary) and the capacity to do endless amounts of hard, demanding and often unpleasant work.
Vaious upper level Wall Street traders and investment bankers routinely make millions per year but it’s a demanding, meat grinder life that requires high levels of ability across the board. . Upper level partners at large law and accountancy firms often make a millon + per year.
You’re talking average salary for the profession? I’m sure we can find some pretty far-out examples in many fields but, as you know, that doesn’t mean all who choose that profession are raking in the big bucks. There’s also room here for a nitpicky observation about what constitutes a “profession,” but it wouldn’t matter much amongst the sorts of the things we’re discussing, I suspect.
As for why people would choose something that paid less–people do it all the time. Money ain’t everything. In some professions and careers, the number of headaches is proportional to the pay–the higher you go, the more accountability, the more stress, the more liability, the more administrative nightmares… that is utterly unappealing to some people. When I go on vacation, I go on vacation; bye, see ya when I get back. When my boss’ boss goes on vacation, she leaves her itinerary with her secretary and has to be reachable at all times. Yuck. That’s just one example.
Generally speaking, having a job that pays well is nice…but loving what you do is priceless.
I think you need to be more specific with the question – do you mean the profession with the highest average starting salary, the profession with the highest median salary for all practitioners, or what?
I guess highest median salary would be a good place to start, but I don’t want that to include management (i.e. “partner” in a law firm) because then you aren’t just in a regular job anymore. I’m talking jobs where you come, put in your hours and leave, for the most part, and you don’t have to rely on skills completely unrelated to your area of expertise (you need good politicking skills to attain a “partner” position or other management positions).
As one poster put it, they take vacation and they don’t have to worry about anything. The difference between radiologists and other doctors seems to be that the radiologist doesn’t have a private practice and doesn’t have to worry about insurance (I’m assuming the institution covers that) and doesn’t have to worry about patients when he goes away. In other words, not too much business management or responsibility outside his professional responsibilities, the things he was trained for. Someone correct me if this is a wrong conclusion.
I remember hearing that patent lawyers make a large sum of money. I wonder how the pay/hour compares to that of a radiologist.
If a radiologist earns 1,000,000 a year as a salary, does that mean a 40 hour work week?
I’m sorry, but you’ll need good politicking skills in just about every job above the level of McDonalds Cashier. Any $600k radiologist has surely kissed his or her share of ass. It’s my understanding that the level of ass kissing is even higher in the medical profession, given the abundant egos and liability concerns in a hospital setting.
Highly unlikely. When you’re salaried, that 40 hours thing flies straight out the window. Too often an hourly employee getting $15/hour will get a “promotion” to “exempt status”, and instead of $15/hour for 40 hours per week, they then make $35k/year for 60 hours per week, plus much more stress and bullshit.
That’s how they get you.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put a damper on things, it’s just my jaded cynical humble opinion.
No, I’m talking about positions that you don’t have to “advance” into. If someone who doesn’t know you well hires you into a job at a salaray of 1 million a year (or whatever), that’s what you get. I don’t see how politics has anything to do with it. I don’t consider a job interview “politicking”.
There are any number of specialists with poor social skills that make a lot of money because of their highly sought after skills, not because of their ability to move up the management ladder. Those are the professions I’m talking about.
Not possible. ATCs are employed by the FAA, a federal agency. Federal employees are paid via the GS or WS pay scales. While ATCs may be near the top end, no ATC can be paid more than the boss at the top of the heap.
My brother is a Doctor specializing in Internal Medicine and earned about 400K six years ago (when we did his mortgage). I also know a couple CRNA’s (nurse anesthesists) who earn almost 200K, not bad for not going to medical school (although you do need about 27months training after nursing school, and at least a year’s critical care experience). Before you send in your application to medical school consider that you first need a science degree (generally) with a strong GPA and MCAT scores. Then you are looking at a five to ten year year commitment depending upon the specialty that you choose. Finally, consider that you will probably owe well over 100K when you graduate, and work many one hundred hour weeks along the way getting there.
The US department of labor lists average salaries by profession, and they show a couple of blue collar jobs where the average employee earns more than $50,000 a year.
Heh. One thing I notice is that people always inflate earnings by huge factors sometimes. The best bet is to actually look up cites like monster.com, salary.com, and best yet, the occupational handbook, which BTW is put together by Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1,000,000 dollars a year for a physican? In the USA? I would have to see a pretty reputable cite to believe that. However, one cannot look at the highest pay and expect to ever make that. That guy might have been hired to overlook a department, or be the head radiologists of a whole region of hospitals.
According to salary.com
the 75th percentile of Diagnostic Radiologists makes a mere $313,875 a year. Occupational handbook doesn’t list radiologists for some reason, but you can view what other members of the profession make.
A quick search on monster.com shows two listings in the US that show salary. The first one is a nice 390,000-400,000 range (Key west, FL- nice high standard of living), and the other is a broad 110,000 to 500,000 range(Job is also for executive level chief medical officer). I love it when the pay range is that low. Which one will you earn, eh? I bet it will be closer to the 110k than the 500k.
Uh huh. Don’t believe the CNA thing for a minute. Nurses only make about 35 dollars an hour at the top of their field, and even salary.com lists Anesthesia Technicians at making 23-30k a year. Occupational handbook shows 55,000 for Anesthesia RN’s. Less than the actual 35 an hour nurses. And you expect people to believe some unnamed people you “know” make 200k? I think if they have that kind of money they may be into drugs or something. They sure aren’t getting it from their jobs.
I doubt the Internal medicine doctor making 400k as well, Surgeons don’t even hardly make that, but I guess it is possible, in New York, or Hollywood or somewhere.
I live and work in London (in and around the city) so see some very high salaries - most of these are brokers who are paid on performance and their basic salaries, whilst good by ordinary standards, aren’t stratospheric.
However even in this highly paid environment the money that a good actuary can pull down beggars belief (they are all strange pointy-headed creatures with poor personal hygeine though). A million quid a year is far from unheard of.
A decent plumber can earn as much as a GP in London (he’d have to put in a lot of hours though).
Ok, I am going to correct myself, I saw RNA, but didn’t see CNRA, Chief nurst registered Anethesiologist, which according to salary.com CAN make close 144k a year. So I admit it is possible to be making almost 200k a year. Sorry for my kneejerk statement, I should have paid more attention.
You can write the score for an incredibly successful Broadway musical that ends up being performed in about every country on the planet. Everytime they sing your songs, you get royalties. The amount of money to be made in such cases is staggering.
Songwriters Bjorn & Benny are making more off of Mamma Mia! (for which they “allowed” their songs to be used, and nothing else) than they did as ABBA.
The highest paid blue collar, union type job (without advanced formal education being required) I’ve ever heard of are longshoremen on some ports routinely making 100K + per year with OT. I can imagine some oil industry riggers would probably be in that category as well. Both are quite dangerous jobs.
