The Highest Paying In-Demand Jobs In America

One job stands out on a new list of the 25 high-paying jobs that are most in demand: Physician, with a base salary of more than $200,000 and nearly 8,000 job openings listed on Glassdoor, a jobs website where users post salary information and company reviews. Physicians make nearly twice as much as any other profession on the list, but they also require the most extensive and expensive training by far, with the cost of a medical degree now approaching $300,000.

The job with the most openings? Software engineer, with a staggering 99,000 listings on Glassdoor. Most software engineers have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering or math, while some have associate’s degrees. It’s also possible to be a self-taught software engineer or to learn the skills at non-traditional institutions like Codecademy, the Flatiron School or General Assembly.

Glassdoor compiled the list by combing through its database of salaries posted by its users. People can get free access to salary data in exchange for anonymously posting information about their jobs, including working conditions and compensation. To qualify for the list, job titles had to have received at least 75 salary reports by U.S.-based employees over the past year. Of the job titles that met the salary criteria, to be considered for the list the job had to be in the top 50^th percentile for number of job openings. Glassdoor gets its job listings from company websites, partnerships with job boards and directly from employers.

The list is dominated by technology jobs, which take 14 of the 25 slots. Several of them are variations on a theme, like software architect, software development manager, solutions architect and computer hardware engineer. Given that almost every kind of company requires some sort of technological backbone, it’s not surprising that tech jobs dominate the list. Many of the listings are for companies that are not automatically associated with technology, like a senior software engineer job at a firm called the Therapeutic Research Center in Stockton, CA CA -0.67%, which advises pharmacies on drug therapies, or senior software engineer in the New York City office of The Walt Disney DIS +0.4% Company.

It’s also no surprise that four of the jobs on the list are in health care, given the tens of millions of people newly covered by Obamacare and the aging Baby Boomer population. Following physician, pharmacy manager is in second place with an average base salary of $131,000 and 1,800 openings. Pharmacists also earn well, with a base salary of $115,000. Glassdoor lists 9,200 openings for that title. To become a pharmacist, you must complete a four-year “PharmD” program. Though it varies by region and school, most programs require a bachelor’s degree with undergraduate coursework in physics, chemistry, biology and calculus, though some programs admit applicants with an associate’s degree or no college degree at all. The greatest number of health care job listings are for physician assistants with an impressive 43,700 jobs. To become a P.A. you need to graduate from a two-year master’s program, which typically consists of a year in the classroom and a year of clinical work.

Among the jobs outside the technology or health care fields: finance manager with a base salary of $124,000 and 9,200 openings. One surprise, given all the reports of the diminishing opportunities in the legal field: lawyer with a base salary of $120,000 and 5,500 openings.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/02/17/the-highest-paying-in-demand-jobs-in-america/