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CareerCast.com ranks best and worst jobs—what’s yours?

Published January 6, 2010

Adicio’s CareerCast.com published its second-annual Jobs Rated Report, tracking the “best” and “worst” across 200 U.S. professions. The best? Actuary, actually… The worst? Roustabout (the name alone sounds like the loser in a bar fight).

The list generated a lot of publicity when it first came out in 2009. It was timed to coincide with the CareerCast’s launch, featuring listings from a vast network of job sites using Adicio’s recruitment platform.

The repeat performance was also well-received — picked up by CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the Kansas City Star and other newspapers.

There’s a great marketing lesson here: Create an interesting conversation and it’s more likely to go viral on you.

There’s actually some science to CareerCast’s jobs-rated research. Rankings ar based on multiple criteria, including work environment, stress, physical demands, income and employment outlook. Actuaries have an average income of about $85,000, and one of the least physically demanding jobs with little stress. And to think that somewhere, there’s an actuary happily computing the longevity of a roustabout.

Roustabout beat out lumberjack for the worst job on the basis of the petrochemical industry’s bleak outlook: “Roustabout is a difficult and dangerous job working on an oil rig with a salary of about $31,000 per year, high unemployment and a negative outlook for growth, which is why it’s ranked as the nation’s worst job,” said Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com.

To see the full rankings of all 200 jobs and the study’s methodology, go to www.CareerCast.com or www.JobsRated.com.

Best Jobs in 2010 and How They Fared in 2009:
1. Actuary (up 1)
2. Software Engineer (up 3)
3. Computer Systems Analyst (up 3)
4. Biologist (no change)
5. Historian (up 2)
6. Mathematician (down 5)
7. Paralegal Assistant (up 10)
8. Statistician (down 5)
9. Accountant (up 1)
10. Dental Hygienist (up 35)

Worst Jobs in 2010 and How They Fared in 2009:
200. Roustabout (down
199. Lumberjack (up 1)
198. Ironworker (down 7)
197. Dairy Farmer (up 2)
196. Welder (down 3)
195. Garbage Collector (down 1)
194. Taxi Driver (up 4)
193. Construction Worker/Laborer (down 3)
192. Meter Reader (down 13)
191. Mail Carrier (down 2)

So what’s the worst job you ever had? I was in charge of burying small, dead animals on a pipeline project across Northern Indiana. It paid $3.71 an hour and was a union job. (I could have had it for life, I suppose.)

Can you beat that? Love to hear your comments!

Posted in Recruitment | Tagged careercast.com, jobs rated report, tony lee, us

Report: Foreclosure.com parent files bankrupcty papers

Published January 4, 2010

As a general rule, we don’t point out bankruptcies unless they’re public or otherwise highly visible companies. And over the past two years, debt reorganization was a pretty common business practice brought about by the recession. But this one crossed our desk this morning and it seemed to have a ring of irony to it, so we pass it along to you:

FFS Data, the Boca-Raton, Fla.-based parent of Foreclosure.com, is seeking bankruptcy court protection, according to the South Florida Business Journal. Foreclosure.com lists foreclosures, tax-lien sales and bank repos. The report said FFS had more than $27 million in debts against assets of about $9 million, on annual income of almost $16 million. Otherwise, the article was thin on facts, as the company didn’t return the magazine’s calls.

We don’t make light of anyone’s financial misery. But if you were among the hundreds of thousands who lost their homes in 2008-2009, or saw your retirement wiped out because your bankers made risky real estate loans, you just might hear the cosmos’ wicked chortling over this one — if you’ve recovered your sense of humor, that is.

Here’s a bit more about it in this clients-only post.

Posted in Real estate | Tagged ffs data, foreclosure.com, us

Jay Small leaving Scripps for Cordillera

Published December 18, 2009

Jay Small, a tech-savvy leader in interactive media who’s worked at Central Newspapers, Belo and several other major newspaper / media companies, is leaving Scripps to join Cordillera Communications as president of interactive media.

Small, who also publishes a blog at JaySmall.com and was an occasional consultant at “Small Initiatives,”http://jaysmall.com/2009/10/26/reminders-why-i-wound-down-small-initiatives, announced his move on his blog today.http://jaysmall.com/2009/12/18/my-tremendous-new-opportunity He’s been in Knoxville for a while, after several years in Indianapolis and other markets, and notes that “we get to stay in Knoxville and see the kids through their years at Bearden High School (go Bulldogs!) and East Tennessee State University (go Bucs!)” He’ll travel regularly, “but that’s no change from my life for, oh, 12 years or so.”

Cordillera owns television stations in 13 mid-size markets including Lexington, Ky., Tucson, Ariz., and Colorado Springs, Colo.