Method and data source
The Department of Labor’s O*NET Online occupational database includes survey-based measurements of how important various skills, activities, and personal traits are for a particular job.
One of the characteristics measured is stress tolerance, which O*NET describes as jobs requiring “accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high-stress situations.”
O*NET scores job characteristics like stress tolerance on a scale from 0 to 100, where a 0 means stress tolerance is not at all necessary for an occupation, and 100 suggests a job with a very high-stress environment.
We ranked occupations from most to least stressful using O*NET’s stress tolerance score, with lower scores indicating less stressful jobs. Since we are interested in high-paying jobs, we looked at occupations that had stress tolerance scores available and with average annual salaries of at least $75,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data for May 2021, the most recently available release.
The above jobs were ranked from most to least stressful. In the case of a tied stress tolerance score, we ranked by average annual wages.
Several of the jobs fell in academia, with postsecondary teachers in various fields and researchers in economics, statistics, mathematics, and materials science dominating the top of the list.
Andy Kiersz previously contributed to this story.
