Pharmacist.
Do they actually qualify you as as an actuary, though? Or is it just an ordinary degree that happens to be in that subject? I mean, otherwise I’d be surprised anyone bothers the long way round.
It’s a tad complex: they gain you exemptions from many of the exams.
There is no way an average person could hope to become a real engineer. The schooling is incredibly difficult even for people that showed great promise before and the drop-out rate is high. That is a better example of something that is really hard to do yet doesn’t tend to pay that super well over the lifetime of the job. It does pay well initially for the engineering skills alone but you have have to make it as a manager to make real money later and not everyone can do that.
Becoming a self-employed plumber or electrician is a pretty good bet. There is lots of knowledge to know but it is fairly constant and you can build up to it over time. As long as you are willing to get your hands dirty, it can pay in the middle to upper middle class range. Skilled welding is a different version of that. It can pay well if you can weld exotic materials but it is monotonous and a little dangerous under some work conditions. The same is true with pipe-fitting. You can work your way up to be a foreman at a large industrial facility and make good money even when you are older if you have some basic people and literacy skills.
You have to break question down by what you mean as ‘the average person’? Where I grew up in northern Louisiana, the answer is simple for rednecks that hated school. You go and work as a roughneck two weeks on and two weeks off on an offshore oil rig. It pays a lot in their terms and most able-bodied men can do it as long as you can stand it.
If you are reliable and know decent math, becoming an accountant is a good and steady trade. If you like health care and are average or above in intelligence, becoming a nurse is in demand and pays well or at least it can if you need it to. If you are good with technology, there are some IT jobs that pay decently and offer good work conditions even without a college degree.
I don’t think actuaries qualify under this question. They are talented people who undergo a lot of school to become what is a basically a professional academic profession. The exams are very difficult as well. The work is steady and the pay is high but average people would have no idea what they are talking about.
I had another idea: Mortuary science. There is a cash cow right there for anyone willing to put up with the work.
I don’t believe this is true. I’m in sales (not much any more) and have managed salespeople. It’s not something I’ve figured out how to teach people. You got it or you ain’t got it, in my experience.
Google “Employment Projections Homepage,” which is from the Dept. of Labor and has shitloads of separate long lists and articles indexed every which way. Don’t forget to check out the quarterly close-up articles as well.
I think the page indexed by professions is best place to dive in. But don’t forget to snake around the site.
Best,
Leo
:smack: Why did I say “Google.x,y,z…” when I already linked it? Infinite recession …
As Jimi said, there must be somewhere out of here…:eek:
Registered Nurse. You only need a two year degree, and if you work in a high-paying market like Boston to New York, you can easily make 100 grand your fist year out, with some Ot. Often you can work lots of overtime and the job is completely recession proof. With some more training you can go on to become a Nurse Anesthetist, and the pay increase is substantial.
YMMV, depending on your jurisdiction. I’m a third year nursing student in Canada - most provinces require a four year baccalaureate degree (BN or BScN) in order to become a RN, and the rest of the provinces require a three year diploma. And I wouldn’t say your average person would be able to get into nursing school here.
There’s two universities with nursing programs in my city, and the competitive average to get in is over 80% (based on your grade 12 marks) - we don’t use GPA’s in high school here. Some people say this is just to limit the number of people who get into the program, but that you don’t really need to have marks that are that high to do well in the program. I disagree, and I think anyone who didn’t do fairly well in high school most likely wouldn’t do well in my program.
You can become a LPN in Canada with a two year program, but then you would need to do significant upgrading courses if you wanted to become a RN afterwards.
YMMV in different countries. I know that at least some places in the US have a two year degree that leads to being a RN, and I don’t know how competitive it is to get into/do well in those programs.
No. I have a friend who has a PhD in statistics from an actuarial statistics department. He graduated about three years ago, and is still sitting his exams to become an actuary. He is exempt from a few initial exams, but he’s still been sitting them for years. I don’t think actuary is something that any “normal” person can do. They’re highly paid for a reason.
Dang - beat me to it. That is a very enlightening page with strong pointers to good choices. That said, the occupations seemed to imply an above-average person.
The OP poses an interesting question because I am pondering how to direct my teenage children towards a career. Of course eventually they will make the choices but the more options they know about, the better the decision.
One wants to be a primary (elementary) school teacher which probably suits her well. Another wants to work with endangered animals - well, tigers actually (I’ve suggested starting off with civets, something small but no…) so a zoology degree beckons. My son…wants to join the SAS or be a police officer, but now might study law! He is great and will do well whatever happens.
My suggestion has been optholomology - clean, 9-5, in demand, portable etc. Or radiotherapist/medical technician. Jobs which are less demanding than medicine but important and in demand world wide.
Apart from that, I agree good honest blue-collar plumbing and electrical work are excellent skills. All the Google/Yahoo/Cisco geeks might be the current winners in society but they still need the plumbing to flush and the lights to switch on.
Pharmacists do quite well in the US for salaries. However, the coursework might be a bit hard for an average person or require an above-average level of dedication.
Mmm…I’d have thought chemistry, a bit of physics, and mathematics would be primary. Pharmacy is a good suggestion but not average.
I don’t know if you meant optometry, and I don’t know much about admittance to optometry school, but ophthalmology is a speciality of medicine. Not only does it require admission to medical school, but from there it requires above-average performance within medical school, as it is one of the more competitive residencies to match into.
Apologies - optometry is correct. My bad.
Optometry is a doctoral degree requiring college (the majority of students have a college degree, but it’s possible to be accepted with three years so long as you have the pre-reqs) and four years of optometry school after college, along with an optional one year residency. So it doesn’t quite seem to fit what the OP’s looking for.
Although it’s far from true in the rest of the United States, in the Buffalo area run-of-the-mill elementary and high school teachers earn salaries approaching and occasionally exceeding six digits, thanks to very strong local unions. Police officers in the area also earn salaries approaching six digits, and a college degree is usually a prerequisite.
If you’re making $80K to $100K in Buffalo, you can live a very comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle with almost no debt.
How much money do you want to bet that this person is going to post spam very, very shortly?
Human guinea pig for medical testing.
Drug dealer. It’s not a real job, but it appears to be pretty lucrative and I don’t see it taking much in the way of special skills.