The annual JobsRated survey is out and the improbable winner of the best job honor this year is “actuary” which, as I understand it, is an extremely well-paid person who sits around a clean well-lighted office all day with a calculator trying to figure out for insurance companies when their customers are going to die.   I’m suspect there is more to it than that but that’s my impression.  Software engineer and computer systems analyst also rate high on the best charts.  So does historian which, granted, has a pretty steep learning curve but paralegal is also in the top 10 despite the fact that it more or less means hanging out with lawyers all day.

Roustabout, a job that involves performing all the grunt work on oil rigs and pipelines, tops the list of worst jobs, followed by lumberjack and iron worker.

According to the survey, the least stressful job is musical instrument repairer.  They obviously didn’t watch me trying to change the strings and retune my guitar.

One completely unscientific observation; in the course of my long and entertaining career I have had occasion to break bread with actuaries and roustabouts and lumberjacks.  The roustabouts and lumberjacks were a lot more fun to hang out with.

The full survey results are here.