For the fourth consecutive year, the technology sector boasted the highest-paying jobs in the U.S., according to an annual report from Glassdoor.
Thirteen of the 25 highest-paying jobs this year were in tech, up from 11 in 2017, according to the report, which was released on Wednesday. Within the industry, enterprise architects, software development managers, software engineering managers and software architects received the highest pay, with the lowest average base salary well over $100,000.
The report gathered salary data from millions of employees, examined job titles that received a minimum of 100 salary reports over the past year, and used algorithms to estimate the median annual base pay. C-suite-level jobs were excluded from the report.
While tech jobs pay well across the board, the health-care industry offers the largest paychecks at the very top of the spectrum. Physicians topped the list of highest-paid employees in America, with a median base salary of $195,842. Pharmacy managers and pharmacists came in second and third, with a base pay of $146,412 and $127,120, respectively.
- Physician: $195,842
- Pharmacy manager: $146,412
- Pharmacist: $127,120
- Enterprise architect: $115,944
- Corporate counsel: $115,580
- Software development manager: $108,879
- Physician assistant: $108,761
- Software engineering manager: $107,479
- Nurse practitioner: $106,962
- Software architect: $105,329
- Engineering manager: $105,260
- Applications development manager: $104,048
- Plant manager: $103,892
- IT program manager: $102,969
- Solutions architect: $102,160
- Financial planning and analysis manager: $102,155
- Data architect: $101,900
- Strategy manager: $101,754
- Systems architect: $100,984
- Scrum master: $98,239
- Consulting manager: $97,154
- Attorney: $96,678
- Cloud engineer: $96,449
- Tax manager: $96,175
- Data scientist: $96,116
“Technology and health care are the two industries that are making the greatest impact on the economy,” said Sarah Stoddard, a community expert at Glassdoor. “There’s a high demand but short supply for those roles, driving up salaries.”
While men are overrepresented in the country’s highest-paying jobs, the breakdown is different between tech and health care. Tech companies employ more than twice as many males as females, according to a 2017 LinkedIn report. Health care, on the other hand, has a slightly bigger proportion of women. But there’s still a significant pay gap between medical specialties.
Doctors and engineers have technical skills that come with a high price tag for employers. But Stoddard said business and consulting expertise, along with interpersonal communication skills, are still valued in the job market. Strategy manager and consulting manager joined the list of the country’s top-paying jobs for the first time this year.
Nearly 7 in 10 workers and job seekers said salary is a key factor in determining a career, Glassdoor found. But 27 percent of Americans said they “don’t have a good sense of their career path,” and about a quarter said they felt as though they’re “on a treadmill going nowhere,” according to a LinkedIn survey of 2,000 professionals, also released on Wednesday.
More than half of employed Americans are looking to leave their current jobs, according to a Gallup survey that came out last month. The average American, however, remains in the same job for about 10 years. Hiring experts have dubbed this demographic “career sleepwalkers.”
Perhaps the potential for higher pay could wake them from their slumber.