Best Paying Jobs With A Bachelor's Degree
There are many things to consider when figuring out what to study: what your ideal work environment would be like, the sort of hours you want to work, whether the typical career trajectory in your chosen field will match your family plans, and so forth. However, some people have exactly one criterion: how much do I get paid. For these folks, and the curious among us, we present the best paid jobs in the country which one can accomplish with only a bachelor's degree, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
General Trends
The best paying jobs generally:
- Require specialized training in addition to one's degree, such as in commercial aviation, which as a practical matter virtually requires one to have spent several years in the Air Force.
- Involve moving into management, which implies more experience and seniority than most entry level positions have available.
- Have controlled access into the field, such as actuaries, who have to pass a series of increasingly difficult exams to move up the ranks.
- Involve working for for-profit businesses in a capacity which directly impacts their bottom line, as opposed to working in non-for-profits, academia, government, or in cost-centers within businesses such as customer service or HR.
Jobs Sorted By Median Annual Salary
| Job Title | Median Annual Salary |
|---|---|
| Chief executives | $155,195.98 |
| Airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers | $123,228.48 |
| Engineering managers | $118,314.24 |
| Computer and information systems managers | $108,512.80 |
| Judges, magistrate judges, and magistrates | $107,604.00 |
| Materials scientists | $103,491.24 |
| Petroleum engineers | $103,200.00 |
| Aerospace engineers | $103,181.12 |
| Computer hardware engineers | $97,314.92 |
| Marketing managers | $97,083.94 |
| Computer software engineers, systems software | $89,503.81 |
| Sales managers | $89,347.50 |
| Nuclear engineers | $87,380.80 |
| General and operations managers | $86,200.00 |
| Chemical engineers | $85,813.00 |
| Natural sciences managers | $85,407.32 |
| Computer software engineers, applications | $85,249.22 |
| Actuaries | $82,964.91 |
| Education administrators, elementary and secondary school | $82,877.04 |
| Financial managers | $82,264.82 |
You can also read about worst paying jobs as well.
