The top, oh, I don’t know, let’s name twelve best jobs, according to the WSJ this week, citing a study that takes into account “environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress”:
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant
11. Economist
12. Philosopher
The Edge of the American West 
40 comments
January 8, 2009 at 11:02 am
eric
Do I need to say this strikes me as, erm, intuitively implausible?
January 8, 2009 at 11:09 am
Blume
Given the presence of historian and philosopher on the list, I think it’s safe to say it is judging conditions after one has a secure job.
January 8, 2009 at 11:11 am
Barbar
I wonder if they took into account things like training time, attrition rates, ease of finding employment in particular locations, and general probability of success assuming a reasonable amount of hard work and talent? Hmmm.
January 8, 2009 at 11:20 am
Jason B.
What, no “Royal Heir?”
List is flawed.
January 8, 2009 at 11:21 am
Sean Carroll
Hey! You trying to annoy the physicists?
(If you look at the criteria for “best,” it mostly amounts to “smallest chance of getting killed on the job.”)
January 8, 2009 at 11:25 am
rea
a study that takes into account “environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress”
Historians must do awfully well on environment, physical demands, and stress, is all I can say.
January 8, 2009 at 11:27 am
teofilo
Seems like “physical demands” is a pretty big criterion here.
January 8, 2009 at 11:28 am
Ahistoricality
Looking at their criteria, I get the impression that they rated academics based on research responsibilities, not teaching, and probably assumed that we have all the institutional responsibilities of Indiana Jones.
I will say, though, that “Nuclear Decontamination Tech” does belong in the bottom rankings, so it’s not all bad.
January 8, 2009 at 11:29 am
eric
The one that sticks out to me at the bottom of the list there is “roustabout”.
January 8, 2009 at 11:31 am
eric
all the institutional responsibilities of Indiana Jones.
Do you mean “Associate Dean Henry Jones Jr.”?
January 8, 2009 at 11:31 am
andrew
I assume that because academics only go to class for a few hours each week, teaching duties are so negligible that they barely factored into the calculations.
January 8, 2009 at 11:33 am
kid bitzer
you just posted this so you can lord it over neddy and dana. philosophy, puh–stuck down their in the double-digits, what crap jobs.
January 8, 2009 at 11:37 am
JPool
I suspect they also failed to factor in the enormous health cost of grey lung disease on the history industry. All that must and dust.
January 8, 2009 at 11:47 am
gulo gordo
Wow. My biologist friends are gonna lose it over this one. Luckily, none can afford the WSJ.
January 8, 2009 at 11:48 am
kid bitzer
by the way, i meant that ‘their’. it’s clearly not a typo for ‘there’.
i meant, ‘stuck down their…’ something or anothers. whatever you stick things down. that belong to them. not a typo.
January 8, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Maineiac
We’re number 197!
January 8, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Robyn
Whoever thinks that historians do not have heavy physical demands has not witnessed me biking* at 7 am in 40 degree weather to teach at 8 with a 25 lb. load on my back and another 15 lbs. of books in baskets that I will then subsequently have to carry up five flights of stairs (for to use the elevator in our building is to risk certain death), nor seen me continuing to crisscross our giant campus multiple times in order to fulfill the demands of getting to classrooms and libraries and other such things, all the while toting books, photocopies, miscellanea and computer.
*And if you think I’m biking because I’m a good person who cares about saving the planet, that’s a lie. If I could drive, I would, but I can’t afford the parking permit.
January 8, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Bitchphd
This doubtless explains why so many of our bright young people want to be mathemeticiams when they grow up. Including so many of the bright young people who read the WSJ.
January 8, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Adam Roberts
What do you mean ‘we’, paleface?
January 8, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Mo MacArbie
What’s so bad about physical demands? Sure they can get excessive fast, but without the physical demands of my job I’d be 9000 pounds.
January 8, 2009 at 12:33 pm
silbey
Do you mean “Associate Dean Henry Jones Jr.”?
That thread was funny.
January 8, 2009 at 1:04 pm
TF Smith
KC –
I was one of Uncle Sam’s, not the MM, but having been an E-3 197 once upon a time and now – sort of – an apprentice 7, I enjoy my now vastly lowered chances of expiring in violent and damp circumstances.
Fair winds…
January 8, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Maineiac
TF Smith
Thanks
My mother’s side are dairy farmers and my father’s side are loggers. Everyone in my family thinks I a wimp.
January 8, 2009 at 3:01 pm
TF Smith
Mine were (mostly) truckers and (mostly) ranchers, so you’re not alone.
That being said, my father and one grandfather also both wore blue in their youth, so there’s something.
Blue collar in more ways than one…
January 8, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Barry
Blume: “Given the presence of historian and philosopher on the list, I think it’s safe to say it is judging conditions after one has a secure job.”
Definitely. What’s the chance of getting a good job as a mathematician, for a math major undergrad? 1 in 10?
Barbar: “I wonder if they took into account things like training time, attrition rates, ease of finding employment in particular locations, and general probability of success assuming a reasonable amount of hard work and talent? Hmmm.”
I don’t wonder at all; I’m sure that they wasted no time whatsoever on such ridiculous things like whether or not you could actually *get* the job.
January 8, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Barry
I just read the WSJ article (rather than to the article with the lists), and spotted (in the best jobs list):
“14. Parole Officer ”
Let’s see – supervising a large number of people, a bunch of whom have severe problems, a bunch of whom *cause* severe problems for others, with low pay, f*cked up paperwork and bureaucracy? Some people would rate that as good, but not me.
January 8, 2009 at 4:40 pm
rja
OMG, I always totally wanted to be an actuary. Seriously. The problem is that I can’t do math.
Also, my father was an accountant and a bigger stress case has never walked the face of the earth.
January 8, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Yarrow
So why are the physical demands of Historians’s jobs rated at 5.09, while Philosophers’ physical demands are rated at 6.04? Did the raters get confused and include a few metaphysical demands in the philosophy ranking? Or is 6.04 a better ranking than 5.09, and they’ve subtracted a point because historians have to strain against the Dead Hand of the Past?
January 8, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Spike
W00T! Beat you by two notches. HA!
January 8, 2009 at 7:08 pm
aep
What a bitter pill is this list: The ___ Historical Society just gutted another two departments (one of them MINE, thus the bitter) leaving exactly 2 historians on staff (one a librarian, the other–oddly–the building manager) and 48 non-historians in charge of the joint. The in-house event manager has the most secure job in the place because she books the lobby for weddings and cell phone company parties. I think the WSJ forgot to factor in the weight of the sky falling in when the market crashed. Ugh, it’s heavy.
January 8, 2009 at 7:57 pm
ari
I’m sorry, aep. That’s really awful.
January 8, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Bitchphd
I totally thought Eric was joking about roustabout.
FWIW, my dad loved being a mail carrier.
January 8, 2009 at 9:08 pm
JPool
My dad loved being an auto mechanic (187!), which he dropped out of U Chi (Russian literature) to become.
January 8, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Michael Turner
“So why are the physical demands of Historians’s jobs rated at 5.09, while Philosophers’ physical demands are rated at 6.04?”
They averaged the physical demand on salaried philosophy professionals with those of freelancers, who are considerably more numerous. You try living out of a shopping cart. It’s no picnic.
January 8, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Michael Turner
“I think the WSJ forgot to factor in the weight of the sky falling in when the market crashed. Ugh, it’s heavy.”
And it’s tragically unnecessary. After all, what could be more “shovel-ready” than students’ minds, and what better stuff to shovel into that gaping maw at this point than some history? Does teaching young people history pass the “wise investment” test that everybody on Capitol Hill is chewing their nails about today, while pondering stimulus plans? Does anybody have to ask that question, when we’re repeating some unlearned history?
January 8, 2009 at 10:31 pm
ari
My dad loved being an auto mechanic
Dan Usner’s dad owned (maybe still owns) a gas station/garage on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans. Sorry, Dan Usner. And yes, it looks like he still owns it. Better even than that? The gas station is above the historian if you google “dan usner”.
So you’re wondering why I’m going on and on about this? Well, because this is one of my favorite Famous Historian Stories. It was probably in my second year living in New Orleans that I noticed that the Shell (?) station on Claiborne had a Louisiana historian’s surname sitting right there up on the sign. I figured, “How many Usners can there be? And what’s the harm in asking?” So I stopped, filled up my Honda Accord (I really miss that car), and then asked the proprietor if he was related to a scholar named Dan Usner. The guy looked at me, cracked a big grin, and said, “That’s my boy, Danny.” “He’s a great historian,” I said, as though that would make his day. And he pretended that it did: “That’s really nice of you to say. He’s a good boy. But I do worry about him.” “Worry about him?” I asked. “It gets awful cold up there [Usner was at Cornell at the time],” he said, “and I sure wish he’d come home.”
So maybe it wasn’t worth all the build-up. But I think the episode was sweet.
January 8, 2009 at 10:50 pm
JPool
I, for one, loved that story. Ithaca worries many right-minded people.
January 8, 2009 at 11:03 pm
teofilo
Ithaca worries many right-minded people.
Boy howdy.
January 10, 2009 at 8:28 am
mattheath
I’m a mathematics post-doc right now. Based on a not terribly scientific sample of people I knew while a student, is suspect ypu could add at least one zero (this is in England but speaking to Americans I think it’s similar)
January 10, 2009 at 9:21 am
Apparently being a mathematicians is really, really great « Epsilonica
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