What jobs pay the most money for the least education?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was sitting around thinking about how it seems the people I know who last the longest in creative fields (painting, journalism, broadcasting, acting, etc.) came from wealthy families. I concluded this was because they either could afford to go to such a great school they were snapped up immediately, or else their parents could support them while they built a career/body of work.

But there must be some jobs out there that pay really well but that few people are clamoring to go into. WHY no one wants these jobs could be any reason, I suppose. I know that many police department’s still don’t require higher education, yet pay a decent middle-class salary with good benefits. So, what other jobs are like that, yet maybe even more lucrative? Obviously someone could make a mint by going into a family business already established, but let’s exclude any jobs gained through nepotism.

2

Pimping?

3

Roustabouts and other menial jobs on remote oil sites and offshore oil platforms seem to make no less than $20 an hour for what is unskilled labor.

4

Possibly, but it sure ain’t easy.

5

There are some jobs on off-shore oil rigs that pay really well and require little in the way of formal education. However many of them are dangerous as hell (I personally know two people that were crushed to death), dirty, loud, and you have to live on the oil-rig often on a 2 weeks on-2weeks off arrangement. You commute to work via helicopter into the Gulf of Mexico.

I am not sure exactly how much they pay now but men in my small-town Louisiana home always lined up for the jobs and we weren’t even close to the Gulf. I was told that the highest paying among these (and among the most dangerous jobs in the world) were the underwater welders that went to down into the pipe and then spent hours or days undergoing decompression. I think those people got a few hundred dollars an hour.

6

Professional athelte. There are tennis pros making millions by the time they’re 16.

7

Some unions can really distort pay levels in places. You can find examples of union workers like bus and subway drivers and longeshoreman making a pretty good wage in places like New York and California.

Outside of the unions, I think you will find that the basic economic laws always apply. Long distance truck drivers can make a good living but what it takes to pull that off is a grueling schedule, owning your own rig, and the business smarts to get some of the better hauls. Long-distance truck-drivers can clear $60k and sometimes more but they can’t have what most people would call a normal life and may not see their families for weeks at a time. One accident can take it all away as well.

I have good word that being a farrier (a horse-shoer) can be a good gig if you are in the right place. The work is usually very unsteady but the hourly rate can be very high ($75+) and ity can bring in a good second-income. There aren’t that many around and it isn’t the easiest skill to master. In some places, only rich people have horses so it can work out well as a weekend job.

8

What exactly counts as education? Any kind of high-paying job is going to require at least a significant amount of on-the-job training.

9

These would require training rather than “education”:

  • high rise crane operators on building sites? They’re said to earn heaps.
  • coal miners?
10

Longshoremen – I thought my first husband did pretty good for a high school dropout (construction/union) until I learned what West Coast longshoremen are paid. Last I heard, the average was over $100,000 annually with generous benefits. I don’t know if OT is figured into that or not.

11

In the same vein as Shagnasty’s suggestion, crab fishermen in Alaska can make some damn good money. The catch is that the work is very difficult, the conditions are very unpleasant, and the chance of being killed or maimed is very significant.

12

What about the dirty and disgusting jobs, like garbageman, geoduck harvester or sewer-mucker-outer?

Mail carriers in Illinois have a median income of over $45,000.

Lots of folks in various areas of construction aren’t doing too poorly, either, especially occupations like brick layers, boilermakers, glaziers, etc. Of course, these require pretty extensive on-the-job training, but the median incomes are all around $60,000.

What kind of training is needed for an air traffic controller? Dudes make well over $100,000

All my info from State of Illinois Wage Data 2006 - warning: big slooooow PDF.

13

Any physical labor - construction, mining, etc can pay very well, but that depends on what you consider education. In my opinion, owning/running a business isn’t really a job (you’re working for yourself), but it doesn’t necessarily require any education, just money or investment, determination and luck.

14

Photographers can make a great deal of money without any formal education (though it’s easier to develop the skills to be a good photographer if you DO have a formal education in photography), but it really depends on what you do. A guy who does school portraits can make embarassingly large amounts of money from a single day’s shooting, but the competition for that kind of work is incredibly cutthroat. Similarly, my photography professor (who moonlights as a photojournalist for the local paper) says that a friend of his who used to do photojournalism with him ended up making six figures taking pictures of peoples’ dogs in California, though it happened largely on accident.

Now, unless you particularly love photography, and have good business sense to boot, I wouldn’t recommend leaping into it as a career field though. Especially since that’d only make even more competition for me (As I used to say: “I’m a photographer. That’s a fancy way of saying I deliver hot wings for $5.60 an hour.”)

15

My son, aged 24, makes close to six figures as a “software development engineer” and he only graduated from high school (and that, just barely). However, he has been programming since he was 7, got his first job at 16 as a part-time data entry clerk in a company he stayed at for 6 years, rising to network administrator, and did a lot of studying on his own.

16

You can (or could- I don’t know if this is still accurate) make $65-80k a year as a fabricator for Boeing.

17

[QUOTE=The Octagon]
Any physical labor - construction, mining, etc can pay very well, but that depends on what you consider education. In my opinion, owning/running a business isn’t really a job (you’re working for yourself), but it doesn’t necessarily require any education, just money or investment, determination and luck.
[/QUOTE]

Owning or running a business isn’t a job? You’ve obviously never been self-employed, which itself is a misleading title. I work for my customers, as it is their checks which are deposited into the business account, and they must be continually pleased by my workmanship, or I will soon find myself introducing Mr. Thumb to Mr. Keyster.

Among my skills are sales and marketing, as I have to sometimes call on new clients and present job proposals, financial management, as I keep the books, pay the bills, and write myself draw checks if I’m doing well, and much more.

The electricians, ironworkers, plumbers, steamfitters, carpenters, glaziers-on and on, each undergo an extensive training program as apprentices before being able to obtain their journeyman’s ticket. I know a number of union guys, and there’s a heckuva sight more to it than buying a tool belt and paying union dues.

I’m a non-union business owner, and regularly take continuing education courses to maintain my skill set, along with reading a half-dozen trade journals every month. To allege that we require/possess no “education” is rather ignorant, IMO.

18

[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
What exactly counts as education? Any kind of high-paying job is going to require at least a significant amount of on-the-job training.
[/QUOTE]

Good point. Notwithstanding that all jobs require some sort of specialized knowledge, I was thinking of a bachelors-level college degree when I opened this thread. “Education” of the sort they want you to have before they’ll even hire you. Obviously any jobs where they train you on the job wouldn’t fit that description.

It looks like many of the candidates mentioned here fall into two categories: jobs that pay well because they are difficult/onerous/dangerous, or unionized jobs that are overpaid for the actual labor involved.

19

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]

I’m a non-union business owner, and regularly take continuing education courses to maintain my skill set, along with reading a half-dozen trade journals every month. To allege that we require/possess no “education” is rather ignorant, IMO.
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure a farrier or a piano tuner would provide a similar response, so I guess the question is a bit silly as it stands and I’m a bit silly for trying to answering it.

20

[QUOTE=Lizard]
Good point. Notwithstanding that all jobs require some sort of specialized knowledge, I was thinking of a bachelors-level college degree when I opened this thread. “Education” of the sort they want you to have before they’ll even hire you.
[/QUOTE]

Nobody’s mentioned the obvious one - politics. All you need to become a politician is the ability to get yourself elected. And for that you just need the “gift of the gab”.