The ‘Best Job in America’ Pays up to $125,000 a Year—and Has 10,000 Job Openings
This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.
Most people want to find a job that keeps up with inflation, provides some level of flexibility, but they also want to be happy. After all, most Americans spend at least eight hours a day working—and often without paid time off.
It’s the $125,000 question in an increasingly unpredictable labor market: How can you have it all? Is there a job that comes with the prospect of a six-figure income, high job satisfaction and has enough job openings to make it a real possibility?
Workers quit their jobs at record pace in November, suggesting that people are fed up. The number of quits increased by 370,000 to a record 4.5 million in November. The “quits rate” rose to 3% from 2.8% in October.
At the same time, job openings fell by 529,000 to 10.6 million on the last day of November, the Labor Department said this week. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a gain to 11.1 million vacancies.
Computer scientists remain in high demand
Companies are always keen to use intel to improve efficiency and learn more about their customers and, so, computer scientists are in high demand. They are also one of the privileged professions to have the opportunity to work remotely.
Java developers are No. 1 on Glassdoor’s “50 Best Jobs in America” for 2021. They typically work at startups focused on the creation of a variety of web applications to go to market and to fill existing customer orders, the careers website said.
They boast a salary range of $69,000 to $125,000 and have a median base annual salary of more than $93,000. They had a 4.2 out of 5.0 job rating, and there are approximately 10,103 job openings for Java developers.
Java developers ideally have a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a professional IT certification, and are required to have expert level Java programming, plus experience in database management and computer architecture.
Data scientists were No. 2 on the list
They were followed by data scientists at No. 2 ($113,736 median annual base salary) and product managers at No. 3 ($121,107), enterprise architects at No. 4 ($131,361) and devops engineers at No. 5 ($110,003).
Data scientists and software developers use programming language such as Python, followed by R, SQL, Hadoop and the more well-known Java. Product managers are responsible for the strategy and blueprint of a product or product line.
An enterprise architect is responsible for a company’s entire IT infrastructure, while a devops engineer is proficient in both engineering and coding, and creates and implements systems software, and improves existing systems.
These computer scientist positions are in high demand across all industries, career consultants say, particularly in Silicon Valley companies such as Meta (ticker: FB), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT), among many others.
Three factors comprise Glassdoor’s score
The “Glassdoor Job Score” is determined by weighing three factors equally: Earning potential (median annual base salary), overall job satisfaction rating and number of job openings. C-suite and intern level jobs were excluded from this report.
For a job title to be considered, it must receive at least 100 salary reports and at least 100 job satisfaction ratings shared by U.S.-based employees in one year. Results represent job titles that rate highly among all of those three categories.
The “Glassdoor Job Score” is determined by weighing three factors equally: Earning potential (median annual base salary), overall job satisfaction rating and—of critical interest—number of job openings.
But computer scientists have competition. A separate report by the U.S. News & World Report on the best jobs of the year lists physician assistant as No. 1 ($112,260 median salary and 39,300 openings). Software developers were No. 2.
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