Does your job require you to be responsible for other people's lives? If so, it's understandable that you may be consistently stressed. The responsibility to ensure the safety of others is exactly what firefighters, police officers, pilots, and military personnel have in common - and what makes their jobs extremely stressful.
In our previous stressful jobs list, career information expert Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., compared stress tolerance for each job by measuring how often employees face high-stress situations. This includes consequences of employee errors, which measures how serious it would be if mistakes were made, and the job's time pressure, which measures the strictness of deadlines.
CareerCast's recently published list of stressful jobs also took into account the previously mentioned stress factors. In addition, it looked at the "typical demands and crisis inherent in the job." This list considered 11 job demands, which are expected to evoke stress: amount of travel, lack of growth potential, strict deadlines, working in the public eye, competitiveness, physical demands, environmental conditions, hazards encountered, putting your own life at risk, having another person's life at risk, and facing the public.
Below are the most stressful jobs in America, according to CareerCast. The wage and projected percentage growth of each job between 2010 and 2020 come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
10. Taxi Driver
Median salary: $22,820
Outlook: 20%
Daniel Goodman / Business Insider
Median salary: $55,270
Outlook: 7%
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
8. Newspaper reporter
Median salary: $35,870
Outlook: -6%
7. Corporate executive (senior)
Median salary: $168,140
Outlook: 5%
6. Public relations executive
Median salary: $54,170
Outlook: 21%
5. Event coordinator
Median salary: $45,810
Outlook: 44%
Reuters
4. Airline Pilot
Median salary: $114,200
Outlook: 11%
3. Firefighter
Median salary: $45,250
Outlook: 9%
REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon
2. Military general
Median salary: $196,300
Outlook: n/a
1. Enlisted military personnel
Median salary: $28,840
Outlook: n/a
Sgt Rupert Frere RLC