MONEY Magazine and Salary.com researched hundreds of jobs, considering their growth, pay, stress-levels and other factors. What was the best job?
1. Software Engineer Why it’s great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it’s not for everybody. Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you’ve got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread. The profession skews young — the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired — but consulting and management positions aren’t hard to come by once you’re experienced.
Check out these figures: Average salary: $80,500 10-year growth: 46% Average annual job openings: 44,800 Computer IT analyst was another job that has apparently not been outsourced into oblivion. It also made the top 10. List of the top 50 jobs here.