A good friend, Kaler Bole, a businessman who also happens to be a hell of a news hound, called to my attention yesterday a Web site that rates the “best” and “worst” jobs from one year to the next.
Knowing what you do about me and this blog, can you predict what’s coming?
Yes…”newspaper reporter” is rated the worst by CareerCast.com, which claims to be “the Internet’s premier career site for finding targeted job opportunities by industry, function and location.”
With a median, annual salary of $36,000 and a projected 6 percent loss of jobs across the country in 2013, newspaper reporting is far from the promising, adventurous job that it used to be — except for those who have reached the top of the ladder, such as reporters at The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Naturally, the CareerCast report is disappointing to me, particularly since I never envisioned myself doing anything other than being a reporter for about the first 10 years of my working life. Thereafter, I would get a wild hair every once in a while and think about going into P.R., but nothing ever materialized. Besides, once my salary started getting pretty good, I was less interested in changing course.
Today, it’s a lot different. From the outside, newspaper reporting appears to be less interesting, less appreciated and more stressful than it used to be. And the prospects of working up to a high five-figure or low six-figure salary are low, indeed, for the average newspaper reporter. When I got out in 2006, salary suppression was well underway.
As disappointing as the CareerCast report is in regard to newspaper reporting, however, the other side of the ledger — the best job of 2013 — still looks no better, at least to me.
You’d never guess what’s No. 1…Actuary. Yeah, the people who analyze insurance risks and premiums. The median annual salary there, CareerCost.com says, is $87,650. Moreover, CareerCrest forecasts a 27-percent increase in the number of actuary jobs this year.
Follow me on a short side trip now…The worst job I ever had was working at the downtown Sears store in Louisville, KY, for about a week one summer during college. Along with two or three other young people, I sat on the edge of a huge wheel (I’m talking several feet in diameter) of index cards, bearing the handwritten names and addresses of customers who owned Sears appliances. I don’t recall exactly what we did with those cards, but I think it was basically putting them in alphabetical order.
I only made it a week, even though one of my co-workers was a really good-looking girl, who I was interested in getting to know better. Lust was no match for excruciating boredom, and away I flew.
I have no idea what I was getting paid, but I wouldn’t have stayed if it had been $500 a week — a veritable fortune back then. Same thing goes for being an actuary now: I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it for a salary twice as large as what I made at The Star.
(I’m going to keep that actuarial info handy, though, for our 23-year-old son Charlie, who is tutoring kids in math in Tulsa. The $87,000 figure probably would get his attention.)
Anyway, back to the “best” and “worst” jobs…
These things always fascinate me for some reason, maybe because I like to think, “What if…?” What if I had gone into something else? How might that have gone?
***
For what it’s worth, then, here are the rest of “the best” jobs of 2013.
2. Biomedical engineer ($81,540 median salary; 62 percent increase in such jobs projected this year)
3. Software engineer ($90,530; 30 percent job growth)
4. Audiologist ($66,660; 37 percent job growth)
5. Financial planner ($64,750; 32 percent job growth)
6. Dental hygienist ($68,250; 38 percent job growth)
7. Occupational therapist ($72,320; 33 percent job growth)
8. Optometrist ($94,990; 33 percent job growth)
9. Physical therapist ($76,310; 39 percent job growth)
10. Computer systems analyst ($77,740; 22 percent job growth)
***
And here are the rest of “the worst.”
2. Lumberjack, ($32,870; 4 percent job growth)
3. Enlisted military personnel ($41,998 for employees ranked E-7 with 8+ years experience; job growth not predicted)
4. Actor ($17.44 per hour; 4 percent job growth)
5. Oil rig worker ($37,640; 8 percent job growth)
6. Dairy farmer ($60,750; 8 percent job loss)
7. Meter reader ($36,400; 10 percent job loss)
8. Letter carrier ($53,090; 26 percent job loss)
9. Roofer ($34, 220; 18 percent job growth)
10 Flight attendant ($37,740; no growth or loss predicted)
***
Armed with all the above information, if I were graduating from college next month, I think I’d still choose writing as a career. Probably not newspaper reporting, but some sort of writing. As you can tell, it agrees with me.
What about you…What would you do?
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz,
I know people who do jobs on each list, including myself. The polls are *ullshit…They do not measure everything that makes one happy.
I do agree reporting is less interesting.
It would blow the minds of people who were literally participating in history. Walking into The Star newsroom on 3/30/81…the day President Reagan was shot. The motors in there were spitting out so much copy, it was like an Indy Car pit stop…The Hyatt tragedy and our City Hall investigations…most jobs have unforgettable characters, but Haskins, Lynn, M. Dodd, OJ, and “Ski”…Unbelievable. You were fun too. I know I was no picnic, but I was not trying to blend in. I will stop there.
I would too. I do not know if it would be for a daily publication.
Gigolo.
Thinking large, Chuck…
Fitz, I read everything ya wrote, then agonized for seconds before I made my choice.
:)
I’ll always be your wing man, but buying me a lunch is great motivation
Wouldn’t change a thing, except to toss the last two editors.
Steve Shirk will probably get it eventually, even if he has to wait until he’s 70…I’ve watched his career, and he’s always had great bounce.
Another thing about Kaler…He and his wife Eileen had the good sense to move from Johnson County to Kansas City several years ago. Nothing I admire more than Kansans who see the light…
No, the worst job is Assistant Newspaper Reporter. ;-)
No such number, no such zone…
Newspaper management and the economic structure that resulted destroyed reporting jobs and newspapers. Anyone over the rank of city editor should be banned from the profession, then the grassroots writers should try and reboot the definition of what a newspaper should be … oh wait, never mind, that would take too much effort on the part of reporters.
Readers: Ned is the son of the late James Scott, onetime editor of The Star’s editorial page. Now that I’ve blown his cover…Ned is a social studies teacher at Shawnee Mission North High School. However, he has a lot of journalism in his blood…In fact, he not only asks the questions when he interviews people, he provides the answers, too.
I was chatting with a historian the other day and he mentioned that this is not the first time papers have avoided the middle ground and become advocates. I think once they (re)discover the value of an honest broker of news simply reporting what they see in front of them without favor to either side that we’ll see a revival of the local newspaper in some form or other.
Corruption in politics is simply too rampant not to be reported on and original news is not something most bloggers tend to do well (which is why I continue to be puzzled by why The Star fires competent journalists while retaining its useless and counterproductive editorial staff).
Quality journalism is worth its weight in gold and those who commit acts of journalism actually speaking truth to power are the highest form of hero.
If I could go back to the very beginning, with the knowledge I currently have, I would not have let so many skeletons gather in my closet. I would have pursued a career in politics. I really enjoy screwing people, particularly women. And unlike Chuck the gigolo, my career wouldn’t end when my looks faded and scrotum sagged to my knees. In politics the party never ends and the pensions look to be pretty damn good as well.
That reminds me of what Groucho Marx’s response after being asked, late in life, what he would do differently, if he had it to do over again.
“Try more positions,” he said.
I resemble that remark!!
Fitz,
Enjoyed your comments on the “best and worst” careers. You chose the right one. You did a great job for, I believe 37 years, and are now enjoying writing for the fun of it.
Don’t forget that a lot of your friends started in journalism…me, Russell, Kenny O’Day, Ronnie Neal. Of course, the pay wasn’t the greatest; the hours were often horrendous; and the pressure was often more than normal people could take.
But as I reflect back, delivering papers twice a day for The Louisville Times and Courier-Journal was our dabble and contribution to the field of journalism.
I don’t know if you remember, John, but I started out the same way, delivering with a guy named Kenny Hyatt and later with Wally Clifford. My most teeth-grinding memory of delivering for Wally was that I ended up working for him, free, for a week after we were in a poker game and I ran out of money.
It was “trips” (three of a kind) to win, and it was down to him and me. The pot was big (relative to high school kids anyway), and he made a big bet. I, who didn’t have the trips and thought he was bluffing, told him I wanted to “see” the bet but didn’t have enough money to match him. He said he’d “cover” me by letting me put up as collateral a pledge to deliver his route for a week, if I lost.
Of course, he had the trips, and I was hosed…That was about the longest week of my life. I had to deliver mornings and afternoons, and as you alluded to, mornings involved getting up about 4:30 a.m. and running the route ’til about 6:30 or 7.
Not since then have I ever bet anything more than the cash I arrive with. I’ve tapped out at the racetrack a few times, but at least I walked away without owing anybody anything.