Here are the 20 most common jobs in America

If you’re thinking of becoming a location wellness aide, here’s the bully news: Nearly 4 million people work successful that profession, arsenic of 2024.

And here’s some little encouraging news: The median wage for a location wellness oregon idiosyncratic attraction adjutant is lone $34,900.

And so it goes for galore of the astir communal jobs successful America: Lots of positions, not a batch of pay.

Of the 20 astir prevalent jobs successful the nation, lone 2 wage six figures, according to data on median salary from the national Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 5 wage much than $50,000 a year.

“You’re looking astatine things similar cashiers oregon location wellness aides or retail sales,” said Michelle Holder, an associate professor of economics astatine John Jay College, City University of New York. “Somebody’s got to bash it, right? This is simply a work economy. The jobs are dictated by our wants and needs.”

The large vantage of a communal job, of course, is the sheer fig of positions. With 3.8 cardinal retail income jobs retired there, you should beryllium capable to find 1 in just astir any market.

But even that axiom doesn’t always hold.

“You can’t instrumentality it arsenic a warrant that those jobs volition ever beryllium easier to find,” said Keith Spencer, a vocation adept with the resume-writing work Resume Now.

In the Great Recession of 2008, for example, “a batch of radical were trying to find a backup occupation successful retail oregon nutrient service, and those jobs became harder to travel by,” Spencer said.

Workplace survey: Cost of surviving is up. Paychecks are not. And workers are not OK.

If you work one of the astir communal jobs, you whitethorn also find that you are easily replaced.

Of the 10 astir prevalent jobs, lone 2 necessitate a bachelor’s degree, according to national data. One of those occupations is wide and operational managers, a gig that paid $102,950 successful median income successful 2024. The different is registered nurses, with a wage of $93,600.

Fast nutrient and antagonistic jobs, by contrast, necessitate nary ceremonial educational credential. And the gig pays an average $30,480 a year.

“Those are the roles wherever you perceive the stories of toxic employers bragging that they could regenerate anyone astatine a moment’s notice,” Spencer said.

An big earning hardly $30,000 a twelvemonth down a fast-food antagonistic volition beryllium hard-pressed to enactment a family, Holder said.

“You’d request some adults working to execute middle-class status,” she said. “That’s the downside.”