This post was originally published on this site
One of the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may be our relationship to our work. Are you happy with your job? Or are you one of the millions of quitters? Does it pay enough to make that commute, or work long hours from home?
It’s a tough labor market. The U.S. added a paltry 199,000 new jobs in December and just 249,000 in November at a time when the economy should be creating twice that amount, economists say.
The U.S. jobless rate fell back to 3.9% from 4.2%, reaching to a new pandemic low. The rate stood at 3.5% right before the pandemic. However, the “labor-force participation rate” hit a pandemic high of 61.9%.
Here’s the good news: Wages increased by 4.7% in 2021. The last time wages rose that rapidly was many decades ago. It’s the one of the few silver linings in the jobs report, showing that pandemic-era employers are keen to attract staff.
The highest-paid job
Now for the $200,000 question: Glassdoor’s “25 highest-paid jobs in America” report for 2022 lists physicians in the No. 1 spot, making it one of the most well-rewarded jobs in the world, particularly during a worldwide pandemic.
Physicians made a median annual salary of $193,415, with 3,729 job openings. Based Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, they make $208,000 a year with 3% growth over the next decade. That’s roughly 3 times the annual median wage.
For a job title to be considered for Glassdoor’s list of highest-paid jobs, job titles must receive at least 100 salary reports shared by U.S.-based employees over the past year. It also employs a statistical algorithm to assess median base pay.
Glassdoor also controls for salary variables such as city and the level of seniority, and takes into account job-title normalization that groups similar job titles. C-suite level jobs were excluded from its annual report.
Other jobs that pay well
Next on the “highest paid” list was pharmacy manager ($144,768 with 3,042 openings), dentist ($142,478 with 3,655 openings), pharmacist ($126,438 with 1,884 openings) and enterprise architect ($122,585 and 1,555 openings).
But what if you don’t work as a physician or an enterprise architect? Careers websites that use anonymous salary reports from around the country are extremely helpful in finding out if you’re being paid at the market rate, or not.
Don’t bet on your colleague to spill the means. In this survey by researchers at Harvard Business School and UCLA, around half of respondents said that they would not tell their peers what they earned, even for a reward of $125.
“Individuals are afraid to ask coworkers about their salaries, because they understand that most coworkers prefer to keep their salary information private,” the paper said. If they ask, they too will likely have to answer the same question.
The ‘best places’ to work in America
On Wednesday, Glassdoor also released its “best places to work in America” for companies with more than 1,000 employees. The No. 1 company was tech company Nvidia
NVDA,
based on how satisfied they were overall with their employer.
Also on Glassdoor’s list were software company HubSpot, management consultancy Bain & Co., real-estate brokerage eXp Realty, software firm Box
BOX,
Boston Consulting Group, and Alphabet
GOOG,
(You can see the full list here.)
Workers were asked to rate their CEO, and key workplace attributes such as career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, diversity and inclusion, senior management and work-life balance.
“Employees are also asked whether they would recommend their employer to a friend and whether they believe their employer’s six-month business outlook is positive, negative or if they have no opinion,” Glassdoor said.
Read next: The ‘best job in America’ pays up to $125,000 a year — and has 10,000 job openings
