Highest paying jobs for a bachelor’s degree
Occupations where a four-year degree is the stated entry requirement, ranked by median pay. Wages are Bureau of Labor Statistics medians for May 2025; entry requirements come from the federal Employment Projections classification.
| Occupation | Median | Top 10% | Training | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers | $232,140 | $463,830 | Moderate-term on-the-job training | 103,560 |
| 2 Chief Executives | $213,990 | $507,730 | — | 204,350 |
| 3 Computer and Information Systems Managers | $175,140 | $297,510 | — | 670,570 |
| 4 Architectural and Engineering Managers | $171,270 | $262,760 | — | 220,260 |
| 5 Natural Sciences Managers | $167,220 | $316,850 | — | 108,690 |
| 6 Marketing Managers | $166,790 | $293,610 | — | 395,240 |
| 7 Financial Managers | $166,570 | $323,270 | — | 841,710 |
| 8 Computer Hardware Engineers | $161,740 | $225,330 | — | 76,660 |
| 9 Human Resources Managers | $149,280 | $267,810 | — | 220,660 |
| 10 Compensation and Benefits Managers | $149,230 | $256,570 | — | 22,940 |
| 11 Sales Managers | $148,270 | $290,540 | — | 637,080 |
| 12 Purchasing Managers | $148,080 | $223,280 | — | 84,320 |
| 13 Public Relations Managers | $146,910 | $284,990 | — | 74,850 |
| 14 Petroleum Engineers | $144,910 | $253,200 | — | 18,060 |
| 15 Managers, All Other | $141,900 | $238,270 | — | 622,190 |
| 16 Database Architects | $139,500 | $204,000 | — | 67,140 |
| 17 Software Developers | $135,980 | $214,670 | — | 1,687,890 |
| 18 Aerospace Engineers | $134,960 | $205,890 | — | 67,710 |
| 19 Computer Network Architects | $134,050 | $202,680 | — | 179,740 |
| 20 Nuclear Engineers | $133,970 | $196,290 | — | 15,280 |
| 21 Advertising and Promotions Managers | $133,660 | $286,240 | — | 21,470 |
| 22 Training and Development Managers | $133,000 | $233,600 | — | 48,050 |
| 23 Electronics Engineers, Except Computer | $130,220 | $206,960 | — | 96,900 |
| 24 Actuaries | $130,000 | $215,100 | Long-term on-the-job training | 26,670 |
| 25 Information Security Analysts | $129,180 | $199,850 | — | 190,650 |
Reading this ranking
Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers tops the list at $232,140. The midpoint of this ranking is $146,910, so the leader pays 58% more than a typical entry on it — a normal spread for a ranking of this kind.
Pay inside a single occupation varies more than people expect. For airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers, the bottom tenth earn $106,710 and the top tenth $463,830 — 4.3× apart. A ranking like this shows the middle; the band is where your own outcome sits.
149 occupations match this filter; the 25 shown are those with at least 15,000 people employed nationally. Smaller occupations are excluded because a national median drawn from a few thousand workers is not a reliable guide.
Other entry routes
Where these jobs pay most
Every figure above is a national median. The same occupation can pay two or three times more in one metropolitan area than another — the salary guides break each one down by metro.
About the data
Two federal datasets are joined here. Wages come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey of employers. Entry requirements — education, training and prior experience — come from the Employment Projections programme, which assigns each occupation the level typically needed to enter it. “Typically” is doing real work in that sentence: individual employers set their own bars, and plenty hire above or below the classification.