The dream job may be in Silicon Valley with all the talk of tech jobs stealing the show in the age of artificial intelligence, blockchain and the Internet of Everything, but a new survey of the top-paying companies surprisingly has much less silicon than one might expect.
Techy salaries may be pushing the price of real estate up to unmanageable levels in places like San Francisco, but for those of you looking for that dream-job pay, consider this: The highest paying jobs are actually in energy and healthcare, according to new data compiled by HowMuch.net based on SEC filings.
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And geographically, it looks like this:
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It doesn’t mean that tech jobs aren’t dreamy, of course. Some of the attractions—aside from salary—include swanky offices and hip dress codes. And there are a handful of six-figure-salary offerings here. According to data analyzed by GOBanking Rates, the highest paying job in the industry is that of computer and systems information manager, with an average salary of $149,730 per year. Doesn’t really sound like enough to afford the average $1.6-million home in San Francisco, does it? Related: Tesla’s Model 3 Backlog At 420,000 Orders
Energy, though, is another story, and one of the biggest surprises on the list. According to the map, the yellow is where the money is—across the Northern Plains and the Deep South.
And geographically, it’s also the middle of the country that offers some of the highest-paying jobs in the healthcare industry, specifically centered around pharmaceuticals and insurance.
Howmuch.net also revealed a few other unexpected twists in the salary world, including the fact that the best-paying company in California appears to be a healthcare outfit called Geron, which pays its average employees better than Silicon Valley does.
Among the energy high-flyers, it’s NRG Yield that steals the show, paying an average of 964,000, which makes it the darling of the jobs map.
For anyone who’s never heard of this energy company, perhaps now is the time to put them on your radar, because they’re not only a windfall for job-seekers. Investors should be paying attention, too.
NRG Yield (NYSE:NYLD) is the pioneer of the yieldco companies and was originally sponsored by NRG Energy, which is now planning to sell its stake to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) in a deal expected to close in the second half of this year and bring even more stability.
The No. 2 on the list is actually a tech company, VirtnetX, but the gap between its median salary and NRG Yield’s is rather stunning.
Related: What Sparked Gold’s Unexpected Rally?
The rest of the Top 10 list is surprising devoid of tech players, though.
For job-seekers, it doesn’t mean you should switch careers by any means, though. The companies on Howmuch.net’s top 10 list aren’t overflowing in opportunities. According to the data, on average they employ just over 20 people each, so there’s not much by way of sharing that wealth.
And when it comes to jobs themselves, and not companies, it’s still America’s doctors who get paid most, according to Forbes, which analyzed statistics from the Bureau of Labor. In this sector, it’s the anesthesiologists who bring home the most pay (two years in a row). There are 30,590 anesthesiologists in the U.S., earning an annual mean wage of $265,990, for which they spent eight years in school and then four years in residency at a minimum.
By Fred Dunkley for Safehaven.com
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