Pay + growth ranking

High pay and growing - the best of both

Occupations that combine a high median wage with positive projected employment growth through 2034, the roles with both pay and momentum, plus their AI exposure. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2024–2034 (wages as of May 2024), across 832 tracked occupations. See our methodology for how AI-exposure scores are computed.

The short version

Family medicine physicians tops this ranking. The full list below pairs each occupation with its AI-exposure score, so you can read the pay, growth and size of US work alongside how automatable it is, all from the same federal dataset.

The full ranking

# Occupation
1 Family medicine physicians
2 General internal medicine physicians
3 Airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers
4 Dentists, all other specialists
5 Nurse anesthetists
6 Pediatricians, general
7 Chief executives
8 Dentists, general
9 Computer and information systems managers
10 Architectural and engineering managers
11 Physicists
12 Financial managers
13 Natural sciences managers
14 Marketing managers
15 Judges, magistrate judges, and magistrates
16 Computer hardware engineers
17 Podiatrists
18 Lawyers
19 Air traffic controllers
20 Petroleum engineers
21 Computer and information research scientists
22 Compensation and benefits managers
23 Human resources managers
24 Purchasing managers
25 Public relations managers
26 Medical dosimetrists
27 Sales managers
28 Pharmacists
29 Managers, all other
30 Database architects
31 Aerospace engineers
32 Optometrists
33 Physician assistants
34 Software developers
35 Astronomers
36 Computer network architects
37 Nurse practitioners
38 Nurse midwives
39 Electronics engineers, except computer
40 Training and development managers
41 Law teachers, postsecondary
42 Actuaries
43 Veterinarians
44 Information security analysts
45 Fundraising managers
46 Commercial pilots
47 Chemical engineers
48 Sales engineers
49 Industrial production managers
50 Economics teachers, postsecondary

Source: BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034 (employment, growth, wages); O*NET task data for AI-exposure analysis by PlainWorkforce. Ranked across 832 occupations.

How this ranking is built

Employment, projected growth and median-wage figures come directly from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2024–2034 and Occupational Employment Statistics. AI-exposure scores are PlainWorkforce's analysis of O*NET 30.0 task data, estimating the share of each occupation's tasks susceptible to current automation. Pairing the two lets you see not just where the jobs, pay or decline are, but how exposed each role is to AI. You can verify the underlying projections with BLS →.

Caveats and limitations

BLS projections are model-based and carry their own uncertainty intervals; they predate the most recent macroeconomic shifts. Percentage changes can look dramatic for small occupations, always check absolute employment on each occupation page. AI-exposure scores estimate current task automatability and may shift as capabilities advance.

Related rankings

Safest from AI → Fastest-growing → All rankings Key statistics

Every figure on PlainWorkforce is rendered directly from BLS/O*NET source data, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these figures, or report a data error. Data current as of BLS Employment Projections 2024-2034.