By | Deanna deBara | www.themuse.com
There’s no such thing as a perfect, stress-free job; every occupation, role, and career path will require dealing with some amount of on-the-job stress. But there are definitely some jobs that tend to be less stressful than others.
And the good news? Just because a job offers a low level of stress doesn’t mean it delivers a small paycheck. There are a variety of low-stress jobs that pay a lot—and can help you establish a thriving, lucrative career.
So if you’ve been wondering how to get a high-paying job that doesn’t make you feel like ripping out your hair on a daily basis, you’ve come to the right place.
Defining “Low Stress” and “High Pay”
Before we jump into a few of the lower-stress careers that pay well, let’s quickly cover how we’re defining those terms—and how to best make sense of the data.
Let’s start with stress. We’re defining “low stress” as any occupation that scores a 80 or below on O*NET’s stress tolerance ratings, which measure the extent to which “accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high-stress situations” is part of the job—and most of the jobs on this list even score below 70.
All of these jobs make a lot of money, bringing in over $70,000 a year—for reference, the median household income in the United States was $67,521 in 2020, the most recent year with available data.
