The First Coast's highest-paying jobs

Cardiology is the highest-paying job on the First Coast.

That’s according to a Business Journals analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed medical professionals and staff as the top earners in the metro area. Cardiologists made about $340,000 per year on average in 2022, the most recent year for which data was available.

Coming in a very close second are General Internal Medicine Physicians, which made $318,000 per year on average. All other categories of physicians had an average salary of $276,000.

Plenty of other high-level professionals round out the top as well. Airline pilots and traffic controllers made median salaries of 162,000 and $152,000, respectively. IT managers, network architects, computer research scientists and database architects had median salaries between $110,000 and $150,000.

The jobs with the lowest pay were wait staff, ushers and lobby attendants, home health care aides, fast food workers and lifeguards. Those professions had yearly median pay ranging from just $21,000 to $23,000.

While those jobs rank at the very top locally, the pay picture has rapidly evolved since the Covid-19 pandemic. Labor shortages, a turnover tsunami and evolving employee-employer dynamics have led to a salary surge and a host of roles joining the six-figure ranks.

Salaries?soared during the economic recovery from the pandemic, and that surge pushed several new jobs over the $100,000 per-year threshold.

America's highest-paying jobs

Physicians, psychiatrists and neurologists were America’s highest-paid professions in 2022. All three occupations saw their ranks swell and posted median annual incomes north of $220,000.

Chief executives ranked 12th, with a median salary of $189,520 in 2022.

Materials engineers and nuclear technicians are two of the 14 jobs that broke the $100,000 barrier at the national level between 2021 and 2022.

With a handful of exceptions, most jobs on The Business Journals' list of 100 highest-paid professions saw both an increase in the number of individuals performing them and their annual median compensation. That's not a huge surprise, given the substantial job gains in many industries since the depths of the pandemic.

Information security analyst wages went up 8.3%, from $102,600 to $112,000, as the field expanded, attracting 6,470 additional workers between 2021 and 2022. While pediatricians’ pay grew 11.6%, from $170,480 to $190,350, their ranks decreased slightly, by 190 doctors.

Some salaries decreased

But outliers that saw salaries fall included two categories of dentists.

While medical fields didn’t see the same pandemic wage hikes as other fields, the drop in dentists’ pay may reflect a glut within the profession. Statistics show a five-year slowdown in retirements as schools continue to graduate more dentists than are currently needed. ?

Those classified as dentists numbered 124,680 in 2021 and increased to 136,970 by 2022. However, their pay fell during that time — from $163,220 in 2021 to $159,530 by 2022.

Physicists, too, saw national median annual pay fall, from $152,430 to $142,850.

But unlike dentists, their numbers dwindled — from 20,020 to 18,840. According to the Princeton Review, many physicists leave the field at the 10-year mark, believing they have "topped out," choosing instead to seek out less scientific opportunities.?

Pay outlook for 2024

As we've noted, many believe the lucrative pay trends that have dominated the pandemic-era recovery could come to a screeching halt in 2024.

That's because in part to a shifting job market that has given employers more leverage, albeit not as much as they had before the pandemic.

Additionally, recruiters say the Great Resignation is giving way to the "Big Stay," which is leading to a stronger focus on retention and reducing salaries for job-hoppers.