Skip to footer

Ten surprising jobs with six-figure salaries

You don't always need an advanced degree in order to make more than $100,000 a year. According to Glassdoor, a jobs and recruiting site, here are ten lesser-known occupations that earn substantial salaries for workers. Can you guess which occupation is more lucrative than the rest?

10. Equity research associate

Traders work at a foreign exchange brokerage at a securities firm in Tokyo, Japan.

Median pay: $100,000

Median base salary: $85,000

Job openings on Glassdoor: 300

There are more high-paying positions available than just doctor or lawyer.

Glassdoor, a jobs and recruiting site, recently compiled a list of ten positions that pay on average more than $100,000 a year. The list includes the average salary and average base pay, which Glassdoor calculated using salaries reported to the website between 2014 and 2016. The number of job openings for each position reflect the number of job openings for the position on Glassdoor's site as of July 2016. Many, but not all, of these positions require at least an undergraduate degree.

A position as an equity research associate involves evaluating companies' financial portfolios and using economic models to create financial forecasts. As an equity research associate, one would work for a brokerage or analyst firm and make recommendations to buy or sell stock. Typically, a degree in economics, business, or finance is needed.

Now is a favorable time to be looking for a job as the US continues in one of the longest job creation streaks in its history, approximately 77 months long. After some trepidation surrounding the possible after-effects of Britain's Brexit from the European Union, the US Labor Department reported that the July jobs report continued that streak apace. Employers created 255,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate remained low at 4.9 percent after hitting a record low in April.

Almost 15 million jobs have been added to the market since 2010. The US also experienced wage growth in July, up 0.3 percent since June. According to RBC Capital Markets, the US could see the biggest wage growth from 2010 to 2020 since the 1960s.

1 of 10
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.