People Think These Jobs Have The Most Honest Employees

Americans consider nurses to be the most upstanding workers, according to new data from Gallup.

The nation has been of that mindset for more than a decade. Nursing has topped Gallup's annual list of professions with high honesty and ethical standards in every year since 1999. This year, 82% of respondents said nurses have either "high" or "very high" ethical standards. Pharmacists and grade school teachers tied for second place in the survey.

On the other end of things, members of Congress and lobbyists received the lowest reviews from survey respondents. Fifty-six percent of people said lobbyists have either "low" or "very low" honesty and ethical standards, while 66% said the same of members of Congress.

Gallup theorizes that common stereotypes play a significant role in determining how Americans perceive the honesty of certain professions.

"Nurses, pharmacists, and doctors - considered to be in 'healing' occupations - rank the highest," the survey notes. "Politicians - especially those working for the federal government - remain in low esteem, mirroring a commonly held distrust of the federal government that has developed in the U.S. in the past 40 to 50 years."

Gallup first asked Americans to rate the ethics of certain professionals in 1976. In its latest survey, more than 1,000 adults across the country were read a list of 22 jobs and asked to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in each as "very high," "high," "average," "low," "very low," or "no opinion."

Check out the survey's full results below: