November 10, 2005 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Highest paid occupations, November 2004

The management and legal occupational groups were the two highest paying of the 22 major occupational groups in November 2004.

Percentage of workers earning more than $43.74 per hour, selected occupational groups, November 2004
[Chart data—TXT]

In both of these occupational groups, more than 30 percent of workers earned $43.75 or more per hour. Among management occupations, 36.4 percent of employees earned $43.75 or more per hour. In legal occupations, the corresponding number was 32.3 percent. In contrast, only about 1 percent of employees in either of these occupational groups earned less than $8.50 per hour.

As a group, 11.8 percent of employees in healthcare practitioner and technical occupations earned at least $43.75 per hour. Yet certain healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, such as specialist physicians and dentists, accounted for 12 out of the 14 highest-paying detailed occupations in November 2004.

These data are from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. To learn more about occupational earnings and employment, see Occupational Employment and Wages, November 2004 (PDF) (TXT), news release 05-2145. An employee with hourly earnings of $43.75 would have annual earnings of $91,000, assuming he or she is paid for a "year-round full-time" schedule of 2,080 hours.

Of interest

Spotlight on Statistics: The Recession of 2007–2009

The most recent recession in the United States began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, though many of the statistics that describe the U.S. economy have yet to return to their pre-recession values. In this Spotlight, we present BLS data that compare the recent recession to previous recessions. Read more »