Most Popular Jobs by Income Bracket

Here's a new interactive chart from NPR that gives a look at most common occupations by income bracket across the United States (2012). Click and enjoy exploring. Notice that you can click on any box in the chart, and the same occupation will be highlighted yellow in each category.

NPR's chart provides great visual evidence that helps analyze data and trends from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. For example, in the 99th percentile of earners, the four most popular jobs are: physicians, managers, chief executives, and lawyers. In the bottom three brackets (that is, the 30th percentile and below), nursing aides make up more jobs than any other occupation, followed by cashiers, cooks, janitors, and housekeepers/maids.

Truck drivers are one of the more interesting occupations featured in the chart. They are one of the top ten most popular occupations in 9 out of 12 groups on the chart. In fact, they are the tenth most popular job in the $72k-$103k (80th-90th percentile) income category, but are also the tenth most popular job in the $12k-$21k (10th-20th percentile) category. In the $26k-$48k range, truck drivers were the second most popular. This speaks to the wide variety of duties and demands faced by truck drivers.

While we don't (yet) have such a fancy chart for Oregon's occupations by income bracket, you can find out about Oregon's occupations in demand here: Occupations in Demand (2014).