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Friday, Sep 05, 2025

The No. 1 job in USA with the ‘best career opportunities’ pays $112,000 a year - and it’s not in tech

The No. 1 job in USA with the ‘best career opportunities’ pays $112,000 a year - and it’s not in tech

‘This list of jobs with great career opportunities is not limited to tech; we see several finance, health-care and marketing roles with strong career paths,’ a new report finds.

Most people want a job that allows them to advance, learn new skills and earn more money. It’s the $112,000 question: How can you have both? Is there a job out there that gives you a six-figure income, and all of that too? As unemployment hovers a 49-year low, there are more professions to choose from that will give people the one thing that gets them out of bed in the morning: a meaningful job with the possibility of advancement.

Access to career momentum opportunities in the workplace is one of the strongest predictors of employee satisfaction based on millions of reviews left on Glassdoor, in addition to culture and values and quality senior leadership, according to a study released Wednesday by the company. “This list of jobs with great career opportunities is not limited to tech; we see several finance, health-care and marketing roles with strong career paths,” the report said.

Tax managers have the strongest career opportunities rating, according to employees in this position. They had a median base salary of $112,021 a year and 4,803 job openings on Glassdoor as of July 5. With the infiltration of technology into financial services, there’s a renewed emphasis for tax managers to build closer client relationships, the report’s authors said.

The report used the following criteria: a median base salary over the past year of $80,000 a year or higher, well above the June 2019 U.S. median annual pay of $53,411, and at least 2,000 job openings as of July 5 on Glassdoor. Employees rated their job on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest level of advancement. Tax manager had a rating of 4.1 compared to the average rating of 3.0 across all jobs on the Glassdoor website. Here’s a list of the top 25.

Tax managers were followed by Salesforce developers ($81,721 a year with 3,193 job openings), product designers ($102,054 a year and 2,045 openings), strategy managers ($142,328 a year and 3,131 openings), HR managers ($84,700 a year and 4,351 openings), audit managers ($102,521 a year and 3,050 openings) and data scientists ($110,160 a year and 6,789 openings).

Read MarketWatch’s Moneyist advice column on the etiquette and ethics of your financial affairs. This week: ‘My dad is difficult and even refuses to use his oxygen tank — will our stepmother get all his money if he dies without a will?’

Data scientists are also in high demand. They ranked No. 1 on Glassdoor’s recent “Best Jobs in America” for 2019 — for the fourth straight year. They boast median base annual salary of $108,000, but Glassdoor also says there are signs their salary growth has been leveling off. They were followed by nursing managers at No. 2 ($83,000), marketing managers at No. 3 ($82,000), occupational therapists at No. 4 ($74,000) and product managers at No. 5 ($115,000).

There were other six-figure jobs on Glassdoor’s top 20 list with a relatively high number of job openings, job satisfaction and earning potential, including DevOps engineers, who work with developers and IT staff to oversee code releases, at No. 6 ($106,000 a year); data engineers at No. 8 ($100,000); software engineers at No. 10 ($104,000); physician assistants at No. 12 ($105,000); strategy managers at No. 16 ($140,000) and security engineers at No. 17 ($102,000).

Data scientists and software developers use programming language such as Python, followed by R, SQL, Hadoop and the more well-known Java, according to Glassdoor. A mid-level data scientist is likely to be proficient in Python, R and SQL, Java, Python and JavaScript and make close to $130,000 a year. Google GOOG, +0.15%, Aetna US:AET and Microsoft MSFT, +0.10%  typically hire people for these roles.

The labor market is getting stronger, judging by the latest jobs figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7% in July and remained near a 50-year low. What’s more, more people entered the labor force in search of work. The labor force participation rate was 63% in July, up slightly from 62.9% in June.

There’s probably never been a better time since the Great Recession to start looking. The U.S. economy added 164,000 new jobs in July, the government recently reported. Analysts polled by MarketWatch predicted 171,000 new jobs last month.

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