The 30 best-paid jobs beyond investment banking
It's not easy being an banker, peering over the financial precipice into a world where almost every other job pays significantly less than the one you're in now. I n new research reported in the Financial Times today, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that average investment banker in the UK earns £212k a year, or 5.8 times the average salary in the UK private sector. That's down from 9.5 times the average in 2006.
What to do if you're working in a job which might disappear and leave you ironing your own shirts? In a document issued earlier this month, the UK Home Office detailed precisely how much can be earned by experienced people working in various highly skilled occupations (defined as occupations requiring a university degree or higher) in the UK. Based upon these Home Office figures, we've listed the must lucrative alternatives below. Some seem surprisingly poorly paid. None are likely to keep ex-investment bankers in second homes. Nor will they be accessible to people who don't have years of specialist training.
Tom Gosling, a reward partner at PWC, says it would be wrong to assume that everyone in banking is earning £200k+ however. "Investment banking still outstrips most other professions in terms of the opportunity for significant numbers of people to earn large amounts of money" he said. "The high levels of pay are driven by bonuses, which this year were zero for up to half of investment bank employees in some places. There are pockets of people in other industries such as oil and gas, consumer goods, and so on where people can earn as much as mid-level investment bankers, but the averages get brought down in these sectors by huge swathes of lower earners."
Where people earn the most money outside banking:
1. Telecommunications director: £78.6k
2. Consultant-level medical practitioner: £74.5k
3. Very senior (band nine and above) pharmacists and opticians and podiatrists and occupational therapists and other health workers: £77k
4. Experienced police superintendent: £53.5k
5. General Practitioner (doctor): £53.8k
6. Aircraft pilot: £49.5k
7. Experienced marine engineer: £40.5k
8. Experienced air traffic controller: £40.5k
9. Experienced IT worker: £40k
10. Sales director: £44.2k
11. Senior teachers, head teachers, head teachers' assistants: £37.3k
12. Experienced lawyer: £37.6k
13. Experienced advertising and public relations directors: £36.5k
14. Experienced prison worker: £36.4k
15. Experienced IT project manager: £36.4k
16. Experienced mining/quarry manager: £35k
17. Actuary/Economist/Statistician: £33.6k
18. Experienced 'creative manager': £33k
19. Experienced veterinarian: £32.8k
20. Experienced project manager: £31.9k
21. Power system engineer: £31k
22. Barrister: £30.5k
23. Experienced university teaching professional: £30k
24. Experienced architect: £30k
25. Experienced business advisor/business consultant: £29.5k
26. Experienced aerospace engineer: £29.1k
27. Experienced manufacturing operations manager: £29.8k
28. Experienced software programmer: £29.8k
29. Experienced town planning officer: £27.2k
30. Chemical, biological and physical scientists (educated to PhD level): £26k
Source: UK Home Office
