Forbes
Are These The Least Stressful Jobs of 2016?
By: Kathryn Dill
What do Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, Jewelers, and Dietitians have in common? Their jobs are among the least stressful of occupations–according to CareerCast.
Job search site CareerCast releases an annual list of the most and least stressful jobs for that year. (You can read our coverage of their list of the Most Stressful Jobs In 2016 here.) To determine these lists, CareerCast evaluates the 200 professions on their Jobs Rated Report according to 11 stress factors, including travel required, deadlines, working under public scrutiny, physical demands, environmental conditions, hazards, risks to one’s own life, and interactions with the public at large.
“Stress is unavoidable, no matter your line of work,” said Kyle Kensing, CareerCast’s online content editor, in a statement. He noted that the jobs appearing on this list of the least stressful “offer job security, a good hiring outlook and salary but few physical demands, deadlines, and danger.”
But many argue that the contemporary work climate at large is stressful, even if pressure can vary slightly between positions and occupations. Data collected in 2014 by the American Institute of Stress listed job pressure–detailed as “coworker tension, bosses, work overload”–as the leading cause of stress in the United States. More than a third of American adults surveyed identified work’s interference with their home life as a significant cause of stress.
Perhaps of greatest significant is the annual estimated cost to employers of stress-related health care and missed work: $300 billion.
And a particular role can be stressful for all kinds of reasons even if it doesn’t require travel or interaction with the public. An organization may be chronically understaffed or a team may be poorly managed. An occupation may be concentrated in an industry that’s undergoing rapid change or particularly affected by economic conditions.
No. 1: Information Security Analyst, Median Salary: $88,890
No. 2: Diagnostic Medical Sonographer, Median Salary: $62,540
No. 3: University Professor (Tenured), Median Salary: $70,790
No. 4: Hair Stylist, Median Salary: $23,200
No. 5: Medical Records Technician, Median Salary: $35,900
No. 6: Medical Laboratory Technician, Median Salary: $49,310
No. 7: Jeweler, Median Salary: $36,870
No. 8: Audiologist, Median Salary: $73,060
No. 9: Dietician, Median Salary: $59,950
No. 10: Librarian, Median Salary: $56,170
