The Best Jobs Without A College Degree 2017 (In One Simple Chart)

The Great Recession destroyed the job market for workers without college degrees, and the situation hasn’t gotten any better.

This begs the question - can you still enjoy a high standard of living without a college degree? And what are the highest paying jobs for people without a traditional higher education?

This new chart, from HowMuch.net, sheds some light on these pressing questions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks which professions do not require a college education, how many people currently hold those jobs, and their median salaries. We combined this information into a scatter plot graph. The more dots you see, the more people work in that profession. And the higher the dots on the vertical axis, the more money they make.

You can quickly see some pretty interesting trends. There are a lot of people without college degrees who make a great living. The median household income in the U.S. is $56,516. By that standard, all the jobs on our chart pay well above average.

Specialization is the key to earning a high wage, especially in an area that cannot be outsourced. Elevator installers, power plant operators, transportation inspectors—these are all professions that require a high level of skill and must be done in person by someone with years of experience and certifications. Regardless of how automation affects the economy, you won’t ever be able to replace jobs like firefighting and law enforcement, despite what futuristic movies like Minority Report may have you believe.

Top Ten Highest Paying Jobs Without Needing a Degree 

1. Nuclear power reactor operator - $91,170 (salary) & 7,170 (workers)

2. Transport manager - $89,190 (salary) & 113,270 (workers)

3. Police supervisor - $84,840 (salary) & 100,200 (workers)

4. Power distributor - $81,900 (salary) & 11,380 (workers)

5. Elevator installer - $78,890 (salary) & 22,240 (workers)

6. Detective - $78,120 (salary) & 104,980 (workers)

7. Commercial pilot - $77,200 (salary) & 38,980 (workers)

8. Media equipment worker - $75,700 (salary) & 18,620 (workers)

9. Electrician - $75,670 (salary) & 23,060 (workers)

10. Power plant operator - $74,690 (salary) & 35,010 (workers)

And now, a word of caution. The top 25 professions where you don’t need a college degree only employ about 1.4 million people. That’s a lot of people, but the entire working population in the U.S. is over 205 million people. In other words, these jobs not only demand years of experience and specialization, but they’re also pretty rare. And don’t be mistaken: you may not need a college degree, but you do need some type of post-secondary training. You can’t just graduate high school and start your own electrical company. You have to work as an apprentice or join a training program first.

That being said, it’s still possible for people without a formal college education to earn a respectable salary. The big takeaway from our chart is that you want to be in a position that can’t easily be replaced through automation or outsourcing. If you can find a career like that, then you’re in good shape to enjoy a high standard of living.

Visualizing The Diversity Of The Tech Industry

With the recent leak of the “Google Manifesto” and the maelstrom of media backlash that followed, Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes that it seems that concerns around diversity in the technology industry have finally reached a boiling point.

Today’s infographic from Information is Beautiful breaks down the demographics of 23 major tech companies, based on statistics from 2016. It also provides comparisons to the composition of the U.S. population in general, the top 50 U.S. companies, Congress, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

WHICH COMPANIES EMPLOY THE MOST WOMEN?

With just a focus on the major companies on this list, here is a breakdown that shows which companies employ the most women:

The above list already illustrates why diversity is such a concern for many observers of the industry: even the companies with the most women on their rosters have proportions lower than U.S. population average of 50%.

In contrast, here are the companies on the list that employ the fewest women, as a proportion of their workforce:

Google, which is at the center of debate right now, did not make the list of the companies with the fewest women – but it’s not far off with a workforce comprised of 31% women.

WHAT’S CHANGED IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS?

According to Information is Beautiful, here is what has changed in the last 12 months as of their last update (April 2017):

• Facebook, Apple, eBay, and Microsoft all had their ratio of women increase by 1%.


• LinkedIn had their ratio of women increase by 3%.


• Google’s gender ratio stayed the same.


• Microsoft increased the ratio of non-white employees by 3%, and Facebook by 2%.


• Google, Apple, and eBay increased ratio of non-white employees by 1%.


• LinkedIn lost 3% of its non-white employees.


• Asian staff accounted for the majority of increases in ethnic diversity, while the ratio of Hispanic employees remained static.

To get an even better sense of the data, we recommend visiting the interactive version of Information is Beautiful’s graphic, which shows numbers for 2014 and 2015 as well.

If You Want To Get A New Job, Don't Do This On Social Media

What you say and do on social media has consequences: just ask Donald Trump. It will also determine if you get that new job you"ve had your eye on.

According to a new survey released by Challenger Gray, as increasingly more social media platforms become popular, job seekers continue to expand their online footprints, creating and building multiple profiles. And, as a result, the overwhelming majority of job recruiters are turning to the internet as a means of ensuring that potential job candidates are a good fit for their companies.

In the survey, conducted in April and May among 300 recruiters in a variety of industries nationwide, nearly 80 percent of recruiters indicated that they use some type of internet or social media search as a means to vet or learn more about candidates, and 76 percent check these sites before they initially contact the candidate.

Specifically, 96 percent of respondents reported that they check LinkedIn before contacting a candidate, while 40 percent check Facebook. Sixteen percent search Twitter, and 14 percent see what appears on a Google search. “It is more important than ever that job seekers are up to speed when it comes to using social media. Job seekers should Google themselves to see what appears and make any changes that may reflect poorly on them,” said Andrew Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The Challenger survey found that the most problematic content for recruiters was pictures or language depicting drug use, followed by evidence of unprofessional behavior. Recruiters also reported that any public records on lawsuits or felonies was very problematic, as was any evidence that contradicted what appeared on the resume.

Ironically, while having unprofessional social media can hurt candidates, having no online presence can be just as concerning to employers. When the Challenger survey asked whether or not having no social media hurts a candidate, 43 percent of those surveyed replied that it did. While 45 percent of employers reported that it neither helped nor hurt to have social media profiles, many recruiters reported that having no online presence gave them pause, citing concerns over the tech-savviness of the candidate or ability to learn new technologies.

“Employers want to hire workers who can adapt to the changing technologies used in business. If they cannot find anything about you online, it could indicate that you are clueless about these emerging technologies or tentative to learn them."

“There are ways to use social media advantageously during a job search. The first step is to delete any tasteless or controversial posts, and then to leave or create ones that show passions, hobbies, or professional accomplishments,” said Challenger. “Candidates who are less comfortable with recruiters checking in on their social media should make sure that they have checked their privacy settings, and that they understand how these settings work. On Facebook, for example, profile pictures are always public, even to people who are not connected, which means that it is important that this picture is appropriate,” he added.

While most social networks have privacy settings, it is important to realize that friends can share posts on their personal social accounts which may not be subject to the same privacy restrictions. “The most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to social media is that every post gives recruiters a better picture of a candidate, and you want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward,” said Challenger.

Finally, for the list of biggest possible social media offenses, Challenger provides the following breakdown of which content recruiters and employers find most problematic when vetting a candidate. In other words, if you want to get that new job, avoid any of the activities listed below.

‘Call a Crackhead’ Slogan Becomes Reality as Police Begin Hiring Actual Crackheads

Attention all former cocaine, heroin, and marijuana users! Would you like a job as a police officer?

As The Free Thought Project recently reported, states all across the union are lowering their standards for application and admission to become police officers. And now the mainstream media is picking up on the phenomena.

According to the New York Times, the very agencies which, for a hundred years or more, have locked people up for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana possession, are now courting former users to join their ranks. And the public is supposed to believe they’re not lowering their already low standards. Yeah right!

It’s already easier to become a police officer than it is to be a hair stylist. Now, police departments in metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Phoenix, and Detroit are getting desperate for new recruits. They’re needing 1,000 officers in Chicago, 300 in Phoenix, and 200 in Detroit.

Chicago, often called “Chiraq” because more Americans die from murder there than in war zones around the world, has some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S. It’s also suffering from a lack of confidence in policing and police leadership.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthey in 2015 after the shooting death of African American Laquan McDonald by a White police officer set off a firestorm of controversy. The firing also had an unintended consequence, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, police stopped doing their jobs. Many resigned and relocated creating the 1,000 member deficit in the ranks.

In Phoenix, after a years-long battle with the Obama Administration, Sheriff Joe Arpaio was voted out of office. “Sheriff Joe” as he was known, was either loved or hated, but hardly anyone fell in-between. He’s retired now. And retiring with him are hundreds of more officers who were biding their time until retirement. The crisis is so bad, detectives are being reassigned as patrolmen.

Detroit’s issues may be more crime and economic related than simply not wanting to be an officer. Nevertheless, Detroit is seeking to fill hundreds of positions and have reported people simply aren’t interested in becoming law enforcement officers.

Now, apparently, police departments are getting so desperate, they’re willing to cut corners and lower both physical and drug-use requirements to attract more applicants. And the exacerbation is not limited to Phoenix, Chicago, and Detroit. The NY Times writes;

New Orleans, with more than 400 openings, no longer automatically disqualifies those who have injected heroin or smoked crack. Aurora, Colo., has stopped using military-style running tests, but now checks how quickly candidates can get out of a squad car.

Here’s a list of police department policy changes the Times documented;

1. Maryland changed its policy to allow for past drug use.

2. Louisville, KY no longer requires two years of college credits.

3. New Orleans dropped its no-prior-recreational-drug-use rule, now allowing for marijuana outside of last two years, and harder drugs, like crack and heroin, no sooner than 10 years prior.

4. NYPD now allowing turbans, beards, and studs.

Lowering the bar to allow drug use should come as no surprise given the fact that a federal court ruled police departments across the nation can discriminate against applicants who are too smart.

This decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to condone the ability of police departments to discriminate against smart people is one of the most profoundly ridiculous moves ever made. But it also tends to explain the state of police departments today.

It is important to point out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone who used to use crack or heroin. Beating an addiction takes very strong resolve and an epic level of dedication. That being said, however, police departments actually hinder that road to recovery by treating addiction as a criminal act.

It would take a true hypocrite to kick their habit without going to jail only to join the police department and throw people in jail for the very same thing.

So, in essence, the slogan, “If you don’t like police, next time call a crack-head,” is now being taken seriously by law enforcement agencies all across the country. It could now be re-written as “Crackheads wanted to become police officers: Old rules no longer apply. No education necessary. Here’s your badge and your gun.”

Instead of merely pointing out the idea that police are lowering their standards, it is also important to pose a solution to this problem.

The overwhelming majority of police work these days consists of revenue collection through the enforcement of immoral drug laws and traffic citations for victimless crimes, like window tint. If police departments across the country turned their focus from revenue generation to crime prevention, America would need fewer cops and animosity between the police and the policed would drop, dramatically.

To ignore the fact that the war on drugs is creating crime is a negligent and dangerous act. And, until it’s brought to an end, we can only expect this problem to get worse.

To learn how much better the situation in America can be by ending the drug war, check out our solutions page here.

Who Has The Best (And Worst) LinkedIn Profile Photos?

Submitted via Priceonomics

A quick spin through LinkedIn reveals that the quality of peoples" profile photos is rather uneven. Some photos appear to be from highly professional photoshoots while others are grainy pictures captured from old cell phones.

Is there any pattern in the data around professional networking photos? What professions have the highest quality photos? Do people that are fresh on the job market tend to have better headshots? Are certain countries more likely to have better professional networking photos then others?

We decided to analyze the data from Priceonomics customer Snappr, which has a Photo Analyzer tool for LinkedIn photos. The tool uses an algorithm to analyze portraits for things like expression (e.g. smile and jawline), composition (e.g. zoom and background), and photo quality (e.g. saturation and sharpness). These attributes are graded individually and incorporated into an overall photo quality score. The database contains tens of thousands of Photo Analyzer results and anonymized information from the LinkedIn profiles they’re attached to. We analyzed that database to identify the groups with the best-scoring photos. 

According to our data, lawyers have the best professional photos on LinkedIn, Chile is the country with the highest quality pictures, and people who recently joined a company are much more likely to have a nice photo than someone with a long tenure.

Do some countries take better photos than others? We first grouped our sample based on nationality, filtered our list to countries that contributed at least 50 scores, and ranked them based on average overall photo score.

 

According to our Photo Analyzer, Chileans take the best profile pictures. A look at their individual attribute scores revealed that they earned the top spot by taking photos that were technically strong, with great saturation and brightness and neutral backgrounds.

Developed, politically stable nations make up the bulk of this ranking, but developing countries like Brazil and India show up too, demonstrating how accessible decent photography equipment is these days.

 

This ranking doesn’t bear a strong resemblance to rankings of physical attractiveness by country, but that makes sense: our analyzer calculates scores based only on features the subject has some control over.

We next asked whether photo quality varies with industry. We thought photos might be stronger for employees in people-oriented fields like sales and human resources, or among aesthetically-oriented creatives. We grouped our sample based on industry, calculated the average overall photo score for each group, and rank the top and bottom 10 below.

 

Workers with high-paying prestige positions in law, consulting, and investment banking take the best photos, according to our Photo Analyzer. They are joined, perhaps not surprisingly, by workers in broadcast media and people-oriented staffing and recruiting industries.

What is surprising is the ‘worst’ ranking, as photographers find themselves with the lowest average photo quality score. It"s important to remember that Photo Analyzer is an algorithm and perhaps professional photographers take creative liberties that don’t jibe with the science of what makes a good professional photo according to an algorithm.

Photographers are joined in this ranking by other creatives - architects, fashion designers, and media producers - as well as professionals in behind-the-scenes industries like information services, machinery, and computer networking.

We associate some of the professions on the ‘best’ list with large firms that grant their employees access to a broad network, and that led us to wonder whether network size is correlated with photo quality. We grouped our sample based on the user’s number of LinkedIn connections and charted the average overall photo score for each group.

 

The more connected you are, the better your LinkedIn photo is likely to be. This doesn’t necessarily mean upgrading your photo will net you more friends, though. It’s likely that individuals with access to a wide network also have access to top-notch photography services. If they work at a large enough company, their employer may even arrange a headshot for them.

This ranking suggested that people with more seniority - who have been around longer to develop a wider network - might also have better profile photos, as determined by our Photo Analyzer. We explored this possibility by grouping our sample based on how long users had been in their current position and charted the average overall photo score for each group.

 

People with more seniority in their current positions actually have worse photos, on average, than newer employees. This makes some sense - technology has advanced since these veterans had reason to update their profile pictures. By the same token, recent hires will have been job-hunting recently, and had an incentive to invest in a high-quality photo.

Keep in mind, our Photo Analyzer is a technical tool, not the final word on photographic artistry. Your portrait may very well deserve a space at the Met, but if it doesn’t follow the rule of thirds, have a neutral background, or showcase your dazzling smile, it won’t receive a high score. Research has shown that these attributes inspire positive impressions in viewers, and our Analyzer is designed to measure them.

But limitations aside, what did we find? We saw that professionals in law and management tend to have better photos than workers in creative or behind-the-scenes roles. Network size is positively correlated with photo quality, whereas length of tenure with present employer is correlated negatively.

The Difference Between "F##k You Money" And "F##k Everybody Money"

Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,

Something strange happened at Google recently. Bloomberg alleges that Google paid its top level employees so much that they crossed the line into "F*** You Money" territory, prompting the employees to pack up and quit. While this intriguing turn of events may have transpired at Google and other technology companies, this would never happen on Wall Street for one reason alone: "F*** You Money" is simply not good enough for the fast money crowd. The pinnacle achievement in the investment industry is "F*** Everybody Money."

As the Wall Street Journal aptly noted in their concise chart, most people making less than $10,000 are dissatisfied with life.

As people approach the $100,000 mark, most of them are satisfied. That"s why it"s not terribly surprising to see stories like this one. Bloomberg reports,

"Early staffers had an unusual compensation system that awarded supersized payouts based on the project"s value. In addition to cash salaries, some staffers were given bonuses and equity in the business and these awards were set aside in a special entity. After several years, Google applied a multiplier to the value of the awards and paid some or all of it out. The multiplier was based on periodic valuations of the division, the people said. A large multiplier was applied to the compensation packages in late 2015, resulting in multi-million dollar payments in some cases, according to the people familiar with the situation. One member of the team had a multiplier of 16 applied to bonuses and equity amassed over four years, one of the people said."

The whole purpose of compensation is to prevent employees from leaving. Ironically, Google"s high pay caused just the opposite, turning traditional compensation theory on its head. This whole episode will be a case study for human resources departments for years. Why does high pay cease to be an incentive after a certain point? The compensation analysts apparently forgot to read the Wall Street Journal study. Most people are satisfied with "F*** You Money."

Legitimate retention efforts start at the hiring process. If you have such a valuable project, finding highly qualified people is not enough. You have to find people who are both qualified and exponentially driven by money - with no cutoff point. You need someone who isn"t satisfied with "F*** You Money." What you need is someone who settles for nothing less than "F*** Everybody Money."

What is "F*** Everybody Money," and where can you find these people? Look no further.