Military Is the Most Stressful Line of Work, Jobs Website Claims

(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/MCT) —

Where does your job rank when it comes to the level of stress you have to manage daily? Do you have to avoid land mines, save people from raging fires or formulate policies for public and private companies? Or are you on the low end of the stress meter, working as a tenured university professor, dietitian or hair stylist?

Jobs website CareerCast recently released its annual list of the 10 most stressful and least stressful occupations, for 2014. Not making the top of the list doesn’t mean your job isn’t stressful. It only means there are some occupations that regularly take a physical and emotional toll on employees – around the clock.

Take the No. 1 most stressful job on the list: enlisted military personnel. The median salary is only $28,840, but military men and women do everything from serving food in the mess hall to dodging land mines and bullets as they try to keep the peace in often-hostile territories. (Some of that hostile territory is right here at home, which is why police officers also make the list.)

Military generals, who have to come up with strategies to keep enlisted men and women both effective and safe, come in at No. 2 on the most stressful list. Median pay for the top brass, however, is $196,300, according to CareerCast.

The online employment information service considered 11 factors in coming up with its list, assigning scores to each: the higher the score, the more stressful the job. A high score was awarded if a particular demand was a major part of the job, fewer points were awarded if the demand was a small part of the job, and no points were awarded if that demand was not normally required.

The study considered travel, growth potential, deadlines, public scrutiny, competitiveness, physical demands, environmental conditions, hazards encountered, danger to a worker’s own life, danger to someone else’s life and contact with the public.

Following are the top 10 most stressful and top 10 least stressful jobs.

Most stressful:

-1. Enlisted military personnel;

-2. Military general;

-3. Firefighter;

-4. Airline pilot;

-5. Event coordinator;

-6. Public relations coordinator;

-7. Senior corporate executive;

-8. Newspaper reporter;

-9. Police officer;

-10. Taxi driver.

 

Least stressful:

-1. Audiologist;

-2. Hair stylist;

-3. Jeweler;

-4. Tenured university professor;

-5. Seamstress/tailor;

-6. Dietitian;

-7. Medical records technician;

-8. Librarian;

-9. Multimedia artist;

-10. Drill press operator.

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