Do you think you have one of the best jobs in the world? I sincerely hope that you do, but you probably don’t.
What does it mean to have the “best job in the world?” Of course any list that claims to show the “best” of anything is ridiculously biased no matter how it’s calculated, so keep that in mind. But according to this list recently released by Glassdoor, it means having a job that has a large number of job openings, a high salary and good career opportunities.
According to this list, if you’re a data scientist you’re basically living on top of the world. The median base salary is almost $117k and there are over 1,700 current job openings. They’re in high demand but require such a high quantity of specialized knowledge that good ones are a rare breed.
Surprisingly, the second best job on this list is that of a tax manager. In my extremely unbiased opinion (so, the opposite of the biased nature of this list) that sounds like the most profoundly boring job in the world. However, it should be noted that job satisfaction or overall happiness were not part of the criteria included when compiling this list.
Top 3 jobs in 2016, according to Glassdoor:
Image via Glassdoor
Some other surprising inclusions that made their way towards the top of the list were HR manager and physician’s assistant. Physicians assistants, it turns out, make an average of $97k.
Rounding out the top 25 are construction superintendent, nurse practitioner, and software architect. Software architects have one of the higher base salaries on the list (average of $130k) but they ranked lower in career opportunities and job openings (only 653).
This isn’t the first year that Glassdoor has put out such a list. If we compare it to last year’s list we can see some interesting differences. Of course there are a couple jobs that fell off the list this year (such as physical therapist and mechanical engineer), and a few that were added that were not on last year’s list (mobile developer, HR manager), but the biggest different is seen in the number of job openings across the board. It seems that in general there are a lot less jobs available this year versus last year. It could be because our economy is continuing to grow stronger, people are becoming more skilled, and there are more people to fill these jobs. If that’s the case, that’s some good news.