We commonly have the perception that doctors earn the most, and that the top-paid job is the one to chase. The cap is gone and the top jobs are tiny. Most of them barely beat inflation, and the ones with real openings sit a few rungs lower.
- 01The 2026 pay leaderboardHealthcare owns the top 20 spots before a single executive appears.
- 02Is the top really the top?The median hides a CEO and pilot top end far above the average.
- 03Pay versus years of trainingOne non-physician title sneaks into the physician pay band with less schooling.
- 04A decade of changeMost elite titles grew slower than the typical worker's pay.
- 05How many people hold these jobsThe best-paid titles are a tiny slice of the workforce.
- 06Can you actually get one?Top pay and plentiful openings rarely show up together.
- 07VerdictWhich title fits which reader.
At a Glance
| Job title | Pay rankof 825 titles | Median annual wageUSD | Mean annual wageUSD | 90th percentile wageUSD | Employmentworkers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pediatric Surgeons | 1 | 559,030 | 502,050 | 726,660 | 1,190 |
| Cardiologists | 2 | 496,010 | 454,940 | 712,130 | 17,290 |
| Anesthesiologists | 5 | 391,490 | 360,570 | 557,130 | 38,760 |
| Family Medicine Physicians | 19 | 244,180 | 255,820 | 428,550 | 107,510 |
| Nurse Anesthetists | 20 | 236,590 | 248,320 | 339,500 | 51,840 |
| Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers | 21 | 232,140 | 288,650 | 463,830 | 103,560 |
| Chief Executives | 23 | 213,990 | 269,630 | 507,730 | 204,350 |
| Computer and Information Systems Managers | 26 | 175,140 | 192,160 | 297,510 | 670,570 |
| Architectural and Engineering Managers | 28 | 171,270 | 181,540 | 262,760 | 220,260 |
| Dentists, General | 29 | 170,950 | 191,350 | 319,630 | 124,390 |
| Marketing Managers | 31 | 166,790 | 177,770 | 293,610 | 395,240 |
| Financial Managers | 32 | 166,570 | 186,910 | 323,270 | 841,710 |
| Lawyers | 35 | 159,670 | 185,840 | 351,600 | 754,500 |
| Sales Managers | 39 | 148,270 | 164,350 | 290,540 | 637,080 |
| Petroleum Engineers | 44 | 144,910 | 157,150 | 253,200 | 18,060 |
| Pharmacists | 47 | 140,910 | 140,920 | 174,230 | 321,970 |
| Software Developers | 51 | 135,980 | 148,100 | 214,670 | 1,687,890 |
| Aerospace Engineers | 53 | 134,960 | 142,060 | 205,890 | 67,710 |
| Actuaries | 62 | 130,000 | 141,480 | 215,100 | 26,670 |
| Information Security Analysts | 63 | 129,180 | 132,510 | 199,850 | 190,650 |
| Electrical Engineers | 79 | 120,630 | 125,100 | 184,300 | 198,750 |
| Data Scientists | 80 | 120,230 | 126,800 | 199,130 | 262,440 |
| Mechanical Engineers | 116 | 104,110 | 113,610 | 164,340 | 296,810 |
| Financial and Investment Analysts | 122 | 102,740 | 116,800 | 180,860 | 361,980 |
| Management Analysts | 129 | 101,860 | 113,790 | 171,640 | 898,280 |
| Civil Engineers | 133 | 100,840 | 108,670 | 163,220 | 367,840 |
| Registered Nurses | 151 | 97,550 | 101,420 | 137,470 | 3,379,720 |
| Accountants and Auditors | 198 | 83,680 | 94,750 | 144,090 | 1,449,500 |
- Pay rank
- Where the title's median pay ranks among all 825 US job titles; 1 is the highest-paid title.
- Median annual wage
- The middle worker's yearly pay in each title (BLS, May 2025); half earn more, half earn less.
- Mean annual wage
- The average yearly pay; it can sit below the median when a few low earners drag it down.
- 90th percentile wage
- The pay level the top 10% of workers in a title exceed, a view of what senior people make.
- Employment
- Wage and salary workers holding the title; small counts mean few seats at the top.
The 2026 pay leaderboard
Every one of the 20 best-paid job titles in America is in healthcare. Pediatric surgeons lead at a $559,030 median, about 11 times the $50,980 median for all jobs.
Cardiologists follow at $496,010, then radiologists at $420,860. The first non-healthcare title is airline pilots at #21 with $232,140; chief executives come in at #23 with $213,990.
This page ranks by median, not mean. News stories often rank by mean, which is lower for pediatric surgeons ($502,050), so you will see smaller headline numbers elsewhere.[b]
Medicine owns the top of the pay table, led by pediatric surgeons at $559,030
If you want the highest paycheck for a typical person in the title, the table is simple: be a doctor.
But a median is one number for thousands of people, so how far above it do the best earners in each title go?
Where does your pay land?
Estimate for US pay before the self-employed are counted: each title's 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile wages (BLS, May 2025) are blended by headcount across all 825 job titles. The bars show the median pay of a few well-known titles for reference.
Is the top really the top?
For years the answer was a shrug, because BLS printed any wage above $239,200 as just "$239,200 or more". That cap is gone.[a] In the May 2025 data, 19 titles have a median above it.
Look at the top end, not the middle. Chief executives have a median of $213,990, but their 90th percentile is $507,730, a 2.37x gap and the widest among the best-paid titles.
Airline pilots are next at $232,140 median and $463,830 at the 90th percentile, a 2.00x gap. Pay jumps with seniority.
Chief executives' top 10% earn 2.37x their median, the widest gap among the best-paid titles
Surgical specialties are tighter, around 1.3 to 1.8x. If you are choosing between a CEO track and a surgical one, the CEO path has the wider spread of outcomes.
The leaderboard shows what people earn. It says nothing about how long they study to earn it.
Pay versus years of training
Nurse anesthetists earn $236,590 after 5.5 years of schooling, and doctors who out-earn them mostly need 7 years before residency.[e]
That gap is real but the schooling count leaves out residency. A new nurse anesthetist now needs a doctorate and about 8 years in total; an anesthesiologist needs at least 11.
Per year of training, the physicians still win. Anesthesiologists earn $35,590 per year of training; nurse anesthetists earn $29,574.
Nurse anesthetists earn $236,590 after 5.5 years of study; most higher-paid doctors need 7
So the shortcut is shorter, not richer per year. Try the box below to see where your own pay sits against these titles.
Once you are in, does the pay keep climbing, or does it stall?
A decade of change
Airline pilots nearly doubled their median pay since 2015, from $117,290 to $232,140, a 97.9% rise. Nurse anesthetists gained 50.6%. If you chase a title for its pay growth, check the 10-year change first.
That beats the 40.8% rise for the all-job median. But chief executives rose only 22.2%, though their pay spread was widest in the earlier chart. Pharmacists rose 16.0% and petroleum engineers 11.5%. All three trail the 35.2% rise in consumer prices.
Nurse anesthetists gained 50.6% in a decade, beating the 40.8% all-occupation rise; CEOs and pharmacists lagged
Anesthesiologists rose 39.7% on a mean basis, because their 2015 median was capped.[c] High pay is a level, not a growth trajectory, and small titles swing wildly in this series.[d]
Pay is only half a career. How many seats actually exist at the top?
How many people hold these jobs
The 12 best-paid titles employ only 193,340 workers in total. The 20 best-paid together employ 828,600, or 0.53% of 155.5 million wage and salary jobs.
Pediatric surgeons, number one by pay, number just 1,190, and BLS rates that count as imprecise. Prosthodontists number 870. If you are eyeing one of these titles, your odds start with how few seats exist.
Where these counts come from. Every number here is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025, and covers the United States only. BLS surveys employers, not individual workers, so there are no personal respondents: it samples about 1.1 million establishments from state unemployment-insurance records over a rolling three-year cycle, roughly 186,000 to 189,000 every six months. The 155.5 million is BLS's weighted estimate of all nonfarm wage and salary jobs. It leaves out the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, unpaid family workers and household workers, so a doctor who owns a practice outright may not be in these counts.
The 12 best-paid titles employ only 193,340 workers in total
Lawyers alone (754,500) and financial managers (841,710) each employ about as many people as the whole top 20. The top of the table is a small club.
Small clubs raise one question: are they hiring?
Can you actually get one?
The 25 best-paid titles offer about 55,600 openings a year, roughly 1 in 300 of the 17.4 million openings across all jobs. Remember the 1,190 pediatric surgeons from the workforce chart: they show under 50 openings a year.
All 17 physician and surgeon titles together get about 22,100 openings a year. Software developers alone get 95,300.
The realistic targets sit a rung lower: financial managers (65,600 openings, $166,570 median) and computer and information systems managers (53,500 openings, $175,140 median).
Top pay and plentiful openings rarely coincide: surgeons almost never hire, while managers, software developers and nurses hire most
How to read the chart: Percentile = share of the 825 US job titles this title beats on that measure (100 = best for a job seeker, 50 = middle). Pay is high for every row by design, so the contrast to look for is openings and quick entry.
If you want a six-figure job you can actually be hired into, compare openings first, then pay. Projections are not live job ads.[g]
Key Takeaways
- The top 20 by median pay are all healthcare, led by pediatric surgeons at $559,030, about 11 times the $50,980 all-job median.
- Chief executives' top 10% earn $507,730, 2.37 times their $213,990 median, so the median understates the best-paid.
- Nurse anesthetists earn $236,590 with less schooling, but the full path is now about 8 years against 11 for anesthesiologists.
- Pilots gained 97.9% since 2015 while chief executives gained 22.2%, behind the 35.2% rise in prices.
- The 25 best-paid titles have about 55,600 openings a year, roughly 1 in 300; software developers alone get 95,300.
Who leads on each measure
Median annual wage
Healthcare dominates; executives and pilots come in below the physicians.
- 1Pediatric Surgeons
- 2Cardiologists
- 3Anesthesiologists
- 4Nurse Anesthetists
- 5Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
- 6Chief Executives
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS technical note on the employer sample and coverage (about 1.1 million establishments over three years; self-employed excluded). bls.gov/oes/oes_emp.htm
Top-end spread (p90 to median)
CEOs at 2.37x and pilots at 2.00x lead, while pediatric surgeons sit at 1.3x.
- 1Chief Executives
- 2Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
- 3Anesthesiologists
- 4Pediatric Surgeons
10-year median wage gain
Pilots +97.9% lead; petroleum engineers +11.5% trail.
- 1Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
- 2Nurse Anesthetists
- 3Chief Executives
- 4Pharmacists
- 5Petroleum Engineers
Projected annual openings
The order reverses against pay: 95,300 openings for software developers, under 50 for pediatric surgeons.
- 1Software Developers
- 2Financial Managers
- 3Computer and Information Systems Managers
- 4Chief Executives
- 5Anesthesiologists
- 6Pediatric Surgeons
Which top-paying title fits you?
No title wins on pay, openings, growth and quick entry together. Pick by what you can afford to give up.
Maximum pay, long runway
If you can commit 11 or more years and want the highest median, pick anesthesiology.
Shorter path to physician-level pay
If you want near-physician pay with a faster start, pick nurse anesthetist.
Best chance of being hired
If openings matter most, pick computer and information systems manager.
No title wins on every axis: pay leaders trail on openings and quick entry
- Pay
- Percentile rank of the May 2025 median annual wage across 825 occupations; 100 means pays more than almost every job.
- Openings
- Percentile rank of BLS projected annual openings, 2025-35; high means many seats to compete for.
- Growth
- Percentile rank of projected employment growth, 2025-35; high means the job is expanding faster than most.
- Quick entry
- Percentile rank of how little schooling BLS lists for entry; high means a shorter path, low means a long one.
Bottom line
For most readers, computer and information systems manager is the safer bet than any surgeon title.
Flips if: You can fund 11 or more years of training and want the highest median, then anesthesiology wins.
Your move
Before you chase a title, compare your own pay to the $236,590 nurse anesthetist median, then check its openings.