Take This Job and Love It: Financial Planners, HR Leaders Rank as Top 5 Jobs

Attention, financial planners: The next time a client ignores your advice, calls to ask you about something talk show financial adviser Jim Cramer said, or informs you that their friend’s adviser charges much, much less, remember that it could always be worse. You could be a reporter.

In fact, hardly anyone has it better than you.

Financial planners have the fifth-best career in a ranking of 200 jobs released this week by Internet job-hunting site CareerCast.com, run by online classified advertising company Adicio Inc. Human resources managers ranked third, topped only by software engineers and actuaries; dental hygienists ranked fourth.

According to the experts, financial planners have less stress, a better working environment and fewer physical demands than most other jobs. Same goes for HR managers.

Hardly anyone makes more than you, too.

At an average midcareer salary of $104,000, financial planners out-earn the rest of the top 10 professions. Those in HR leadership positions average just over $99,000.

Hardly anyone has better job prospects.

Expected employment growth, income potential and unemployment figures look better for financial planners than for most other professions.

Contrast that to the woes of those at the bottom, job-wise.

Newspaper reporters, to pick one dismal example, ranked 195th out of the 200 rated, scoring just below waitresses, who have less stress, and better employment prospects.

According to the report, newspaper reporters have jobs that are twice as stressful, more physically demanding, and have much worse physical and emotional environments than financial planners. Job prospects and unemployment rates are dismal, with negative growth figures. Pay of $35,000 is just over a third of what planners make.

Rounding out the bottom five are lumberjacks, dairy farmers, enlisted military personnel and oil rig workers. That makes newspaper reporters the most likely in the bottom five to have big college loans to pay off.

Keep all that in mind the next time you run into one. The least you can do is buy ’em a drink.

Lavonne Kuykendall writes for InvestmentNews, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, email editors@workforce.com.

Stay informed and connected. Get human resources news and HR features via Workforce Management’s Twitter feed or RSS feeds for mobile devices and news readers.