# Math is the best job

By Murray Bourne, 19 Jan 2009

In an article, The 10 Best Jobs in America Today (no longer available), mathematicians rank as having the "best job", based on the job's "stress, physical demands, hiring outlook, compensation and work environment".

According to the article, mathematicians have:

Overall Ranking: 1
Overall Score: 104
Work Environment: 89.720
Physical Demands: 3.97
Stress: 24.670
Income: $94,160 Hours per Week: 45 Notice they are talking about "mathematician" and not "math teacher" (even though the image used suggests a math professor). The stress levels for the latter are generally much higher than those for the former. The other professions at the top of the list also tend to favor math: 2. Actuary 3. Statistician 4. Biologist 5. Software engineer 6. Computer system analyst 7. Historian 8. Sociologist 9. Industrial Designer 10. Accountant You can see a description of each of these jobs and don’t miss the enthusiastic comments on this research at the bottom of the page. You can see the methodology used, and also check out more enthusiastic comments from readers. There's also an article on this research in the Wall Street Journal, Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs. See the 5 Comments below. ### 5 Comments on “Math is the best job” 1. Daniel says: I'm really curious as to how all this info was compiled. Historian is ranked as the 7th best job? I'm sorry, but don't historians get paid absolute F@#$-all?

(But if that's the case, I guess my History degree isn't useless after all Yay!)

2. Murray says:

There is a link in my article to their page on the methodology used.

Of course, it’s not really possible to rank jobs for everyone, but it is an interesting survey none-the-less.

Yes, have another go at marketing yourself as a history guru and wave this survey under the interviewer’s nose... 🙂 Good luck with it.

3. Daniel says:

So how does it feel to have the best job in the world, Murray? 🙂

4. Daniel says:

PS. I know you're a math teacher and not a mathematician, but seriously you might as well be. 🙂

5. Murray says:

🙂

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