Surprising Six-Figure Jobs

In honor of JobMonkey’s newest section on Six-Figure Jobs (who doesn’t want one of those, right?!), I wanted to point out this article (an oldie but goodie) from Forbes Magazine about Surprising Six Figure Jobs.

Interestingly enough, there is a lot of cross-over between the Forbes list and the job categories we feature at the JobMonkey.  Thing that make you go hmmm, indeed!

Here are three of my favorite surprising six-figure jobs, according to Forbes:

Casino Gaming Manager Jobs
Got a background in marketing, but not sure what to do with it? Head to Vegas … or Atlantic City … or any one of the dozens of regional gaming sites popping up across the United States. According to Forbes, the top 10% of gaming managers earn $106,220 a year; the average gaming manager salary is $69,600/year. Want to learn more? Read up on casino jobs at the JobMonkey!

Air Traffic Controllers
On-the-job stress may be sky-high for air traffic controllers, but apparently so are their salaries. The top 10% of earners made an average of $141,860 in 2006, and the median annual salary for controllers was $112,930. If you are willing to relocate for your job, go to Chicago, Illinois, where O’Hare controllers make the highest salaries in the country. To learn more about what the job entails, check out this article on Air Traffic Controller Jobs. You can also start your airline job search at JobMonkey’s partner website AirlineJobFinder.

Post Secondary Educators
According to Forbes, there is a good deal of money to be earned up in those ivory towers we like to call colleges and universities. Okay, so you have to get your PhD first, which will take a good five years, and you have to be willing to enter the publish-or-perish rat race, but for a median six-figure salary, the “sacrifice” just might be worth it! Interestingly enough, Forbes reports that the top-earning profs are those working in the economics department. Law professors aren’t doing too bad either, according to our research. And while online teachers don’t earn quite as much as their brick-and-mortar colleagues, distance teaching might be a good way to break into the industry. To learn more about the Internet teaching niche, read this article on Becoming an Online Course Instructor.

By the way, are you subscribed to the JobMonkey newsletter yet? If not, you should be! This week’s newsletter, for example, was all about how to land a coveted six-figure job!