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It's like blue-eyed crooner Frank Sinatra once said: "It's nice work if you can get it."
Though the U.S. economy remains strong, factory jobs are being outsourced, a slowing housing market has killed construction jobs over the past several months, and manufacturing employment has been on a downward trend in recent years.
Yet there's still good money to be made in the labor and service industries, commonly referred to as blue-collar jobs. For instance, if you could overcome the long odds of landing a job as an elevator installer and repairer, the gig could pay more than $63,000 a year.
Though some people might not immediately associate blue-collar occupations with higher-level formal education, some of these managers and supervisors must have extensive knowledge of business or sciences to perform the tasks of, for example, a power-plant operator or an agricultural manager.
Power-plant operators earn a median annual wage of $55,000, or $26.44 an hour. These workers control, operate or maintain machinery to generate electric power, keeping your home or business juiced.
Farm, ranch and other agricultural managers make an annual wage of $52,070, or $25.03 an hour, to supervise farming activities, get their hands dirty on occasion and handle some of the business and marketing. They perform all these tasks with the owner's consent, of course.
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' definition of blue-collar occupations had included precision production, craft and repair workers; machine operators and inspectors; transportation and moving employees; handlers, equipment cleaners and helpers; and service workers.
The bureau's figures on these jobs no longer categorize them by the blue-collar moniker. The numbers shown in this article are from the most recent data collected, from May 2006.
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According to the bureau, the annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. For those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from reported survey data.
| Rank | Occupation | Annual pay | Search |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | $63,620 | ||
2 | $57,990 | ||
3 | $57,400 | ||
4 | $55,530 | ||
5 | $55,000 | ||
6 | $54,820 | ||
7 | $53,850 | ||
8 | $53,670 | ||
9 | $52,070 | ||
10 | $50,370 |
This article was reported and written by Matthew Kirdahy for Forbes.com.
Published Aug. 22, 2007
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