Key Takeaways
- Specialized medical roles account for 24 of America’s 30 highest-paying jobs.
- Pediatric surgeons rank first, earning a mean annual wage of about $451,000.
- Many of the highest-paying jobs are also rare, with several employing fewer than 10,000 people nationwide.
Want to earn more than $300,000 a year in America? The clearest path is still a highly specialized medical career.
This ranking of America’s highest-paying occupations uses Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to compare mean annual wages and total U.S. employment across the country’s top-paid roles.
The results show how concentrated high pay is in healthcare. They also reveal another important pattern: many of America’s best-paid jobs are held by relatively small workforces, making them some of the rarest careers in the economy.
Dataset
| Rank | Occupation | Mean Annual Wage 2024 | Total U.S. Employment | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pediatric Surgeons | $450.8K | 1K | Healthcare |
| 2 | Cardiologists | $432.5K | 18K | Healthcare |
| 3 | Surgeons, All Other | $371.3K | 24K | Healthcare |
| 4 | Orthopedic Surgeons (except Pediatric) | $365.1K | 14K | Healthcare |
| 5 | Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons | $360.2K | 5K | Healthcare |
| 6 | Radiologists | $359.8K | 26K | Healthcare |
| 7 | Dermatologists | $347.8K | 10K | Healthcare |
| 8 | Anesthesiologists | $336.6K | 42K | Healthcare |
| 9 | Emergency Medicine Physicians | $320.7K | 34K | Healthcare |
| 10 | Ophthalmologists (except Pediatric) | $301.5K | 12K | Healthcare |
| 11 | Neurologists | $286.3K | 8K | Healthcare |
| 12 | Obstetricians and Gynecologists | $281.1K | 20K | Healthcare |
| 13 | Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers | $280.6K | 99K | Aviation |
| 14 | Psychiatrists | $269.1K | 25K | Healthcare |
| 15 | Pathologists | $266.0K | 12K | Healthcare |
| 16 | Chief Executives | $262.9K | 212K | Management |
| 17 | General Internal Medicine Physicians | $262.7K | 67K | Healthcare |
| 18 | Athletes and Sports Competitors | $259.8K | 14K | Athletics |
| 19 | Prosthodontists | $258.7K | 760 | Healthcare |
| 20 | Family Medicine Physicians | $256.8K | 108K | Healthcare |
| 21 | Orthodontists | $254.6K | 5K | Healthcare |
| 22 | Physicians, All Other | $253.5K | 315K | Healthcare |
| 23 | Dentists, All Other Specialists | $246.5K | 6K | Healthcare |
| 24 | Nurse Anesthetists | $231.7K | 50K | Healthcare |
| 25 | Pediatricians, General | $222.3K | 43K | Healthcare |
| 26 | Dentists, General | $196.1K | 113K | Healthcare |
| 27 | Computer and Information Systems Managers | $188.0K | 646K | Management |
| 28 | Lawyers | $182.8K | 748K | Legal |
| 29 | Financial Managers | $180.5K | 819K | Management |
| 30 | Architectural and Engineering Managers | $175.7K | 210K | Management |
- Washington, D.C., posted America’s highest unemployment rate at 6.2%, nearly triple South Dakota’s 2.2% rate.
- West Coast states, including California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, recorded some of the weakest labor markets nationwide.
- The gap between the highest- and lowest-unemployment states is widening as regional economies increasingly move in different directions.
