This rules out businessman, accountant, engineer, plumber, etc. Entrepreneurial risk runs counter to the OP requested assurance. The other trades require skills or talents that an average person is not guaranteed to possess.
To truly assure any average person can succeed, I would suggest massage therapist, or if there are no moral qualms or other limitations, prostitution.
It’s a real job. I would say this is The Answer to the OP’s question. There is a reason that uneducated kids turn to drug dealing to make a living. Very high income potential. Risky, of course, because of the black market. But lucrative enough to make it a worthwhile risk.
I would say no on that one. Street level drug dealers don’t make much money at all. It is often sub-minimum wage for high risk for young street level dealers. They don’t make a middle-class living at it or anywhere near it and there is always the threat of going to jail or getting addicted themselves. There is obviously money in the drug trade but it comes from working your way up. Organized crime is called that for a reason. It is literally modeled after a corporate structure. You have to work your way up to get money from it and those that end up at the top have lots of skills, but also lots of risk. See the book Freaknomics for the economics of the drug trade or research the mafia. It takes a lot of skill and work to make it in those professions the same way it would with any retail trade yet you can get killed or go to prison if you screw it up.
Well if we are really limiting it to the dead center of the IQ bell curve I’d say the following are the more highly paid jobs (that I know of) based on the salaries of people I know that do not demand extraordinary IQs, however, some of these jobs require the ability to focus and be highly trained, and some demand extraordinary mental and physical “toughness”, even if they don’t require a relatively high IQ, so the notion that “anybody” can do them is still open to question.
If someone really is just a schlub across the board it’s unlikely they will be successful, even in non-intellectually demanding jobs.
All the below require paying some dues and getting time in before reaching the upper income potential.
Merchant Marine
State Trooper or policeman in a high net worth urbanized area
Audiologist with advanced training
Nurse with advanced training in radiology or related high demand field
Oil rig worker
Unionized crane operator
Own your own appraisal business in a high net worth urbanized area (usually requires lengthy apprenticeship and MAI designation)
In addition to the above I’m almost tempted to add “the military”. Granted the pay is not much initially, but if you go in at 18 and leave at 38 you will still be be relatively young, have a healthy pension, and fantastic medical benefits, and still be able to the have an entire additional income. If ex-military plan well they can do very nicely for themselves.
I have heard that bank robbers average about $30K/yr. Willie Sutton would be appalled.
My sister, facing this very question in the early 80s, became a realtor and is pretty good at it. Probably not good advice at this time, though.
Depending on the area, high school teachers. I grew up in suburban Chicago, and most of them make great money. My shop teacher was making like $120k/yr when I was in high school. Their pensions are like 60% of the average of the last 3 years salary too.
I concur. Drug dealers make more money relative to other semi-employed lay-abouts, but we are talking a couple hundred extra of disposable income each week, tops.
The OP is talking about what career allows you to live the highest level of lifestyle. It’s very, very difficult to live a middle-class or better lifestyle off of illegal proceeds. At that point you NEED organized crime because the money has to be laundered.
Freakonomics had a chapter on drug dealers, most of them make about minimum wage.
Bridge painter.
Yeah, this brings up an entirely different type of job – high physical risk (and theoretically commensurate reward), such as Bering Sea crab fishermen, asbestos abatement, and nuclear plant clean-up. Higher education or high intelligence are usually not required, just the willingness to put one’s health on the line.
Psst - post 10.
Yeah, I saw that post, but I pictured those (particularly the longshoreman) as being physically demanding (and certainly with some danger), but not quite on the same scale. But, hey, I work in an office, I could well be completely mistaken.
Most high-paying jobs fall into one of three categories: they are medical and require a doctoral degree; they are managerial and require an MBA or significant experience; or there is a great deal of variation in compensation (e.g., stockbrokers on average do very well, but some stockbrokers do quite poorly - although those tend to get out of the field, raising average earnings). However, this BLS list from 2008, http://www.bls.gov/oco/content/oohinfo_faq.stm, indicates that air traffic controllers do very well indeed, and I believe that there’s relatively less variation within the profession, so that would probably be a good candidate job.
I’ve always been under the impression that AC controilers often have out of this world levels of stress during busy times. Is this not the case anymore?
In addition to the medical benefits, there are various other benefits that particularly motivated people can take advantage of for all its worth, such as various tuition benefits, or less obvious things like being able to buy a car tax-free if you are overseas. Not a HUGE benefit, but the sales tax and such make a difference, one assumes, and that’s money you can spend elsewhere or nest away for the future.
That is still the case. Air Traffic Controllers are the Border Collies of the people world and only a few people can do it or would want to. You have to work your way up as well to be at a top position at a major ATC Center or tower position to get the big pay and there are not that many of them. It takes special personality to do that job and the substance abuse and thrill seeking rates like affairs off the job are supposedly very high.
Out of all of this, I would vote military as a general rule. You can be even below of below average intelligence and make a decent career in the enlisted ranks if you can follow orders really well and are dependable. More intelligent people can make more of it with educational benefits or by becoming an officer. The pay, security, and benefits all rolled together make that the safest bet out of just about anything for a generic person.
My job in the Army was maintaining the ATC equipment. Mundane things like radios and beacons, and cool stuff like the radar and switching equipment. The controllers and I were in the same military companies, so we spent most of our time together. Overall, they weren’t the smartest people in the world. Not dumb, either. I’d say “just about average,” but then again I guess “average” is subjective according to the company that you keep.
But “decent career” isn’t the same as “pays the most.” That’s why I left. The overall pay/benefits structure sucked, especially for a single guy.