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COLLEGEWIDE

LAS Jobs Rank as the Best in the U.S.

Want to know the best of them? It’s in the numbers.

An Internet job site did the math and the results were clear: By their count, mathematicians have the best job in the country.

CareerCast.com (published by Adicio Inc.) evaluated 200 professions in terms of environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, and stress, and scored mathematicians at the top of the widely reported list (see the complete list of rankings or read the Wall Street Journal article).

In fact, professions taught within LAS ranked well in general. Actuaries (the Department of Mathematics has the largest actuarial science program in the country), statisticians, and biologists rounded out the top four professions, according to the survey, while historians, sociologists, economists, philosophers, and meteorologists were all in the top 15.

The study cited favorable work conditions as a big reason for the top ranking by mathematicians, but Sheldon Katz, chair of the Department of Mathematics, also notes that workers in his field can find a diversity of employment opportunities in research, education, government, many sciences, health care, information technology, and more.

He notes that mathematicians also play roles in solving societal problems such as alternative energy sources and global warming.

“I was very happy to read that mathematicians have the best job in the U.S., but I already knew that,” Katz says. “Mathematicians are trained to think abstractly and apply their knowledge to solve problems, and this transferable skill lasts a lifetime in a changing world.”

At the bottom of the list were taxi drivers, dairy farmers, and lumberjacks.

By Dave Evensen
January 2009