Highest paying jobs that need no prior experience
Occupations where no prior work experience in a related field is expected at entry. 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 Cardiologists | $496,010 | $712,130 | Internship/residency | 17,290 |
| 2 Radiologists | $420,860 | $594,410 | Internship/residency | 26,770 |
| 3 Surgeons, All Other | $414,010 | $655,320 | Internship/residency | 25,140 |
| 4 Anesthesiologists | $391,490 | $557,130 | Internship/residency | 38,760 |
| 5 Emergency Medicine Physicians | $335,550 | $495,910 | Internship/residency | 32,880 |
| 6 Obstetricians and Gynecologists | $292,910 | $437,300 | Internship/residency | 21,260 |
| 7 Psychiatrists | $281,870 | $446,520 | Internship/residency | 27,980 |
| 8 Physicians, All Other | $265,930 | $452,360 | Internship/residency | 342,720 |
| 9 General Internal Medicine Physicians | $256,560 | $475,430 | Internship/residency | 67,150 |
| 10 Family Medicine Physicians | $244,180 | $428,550 | Internship/residency | 107,510 |
| 11 Nurse Anesthetists | $236,590 | $339,500 | — | 51,840 |
| 12 Pediatricians, General | $210,040 | $338,500 | Internship/residency | 39,390 |
| 13 Physicists | $172,250 | $274,110 | — | 20,430 |
| 14 Dentists, General | $170,950 | $319,630 | — | 124,390 |
| 15 Computer Hardware Engineers | $161,740 | $225,330 | — | 76,660 |
| 16 Lawyers | $159,670 | $351,600 | — | 754,500 |
| 17 Air Traffic Controllers | $148,080 | $215,610 | Long-term on-the-job training | 22,510 |
| 18 Petroleum Engineers | $144,910 | $253,200 | — | 18,060 |
| 19 Pharmacists | $140,910 | $174,230 | — | 321,970 |
| 20 Computer and Information Research Scientists | $140,300 | $230,630 | — | 37,200 |
| 21 Optometrists | $136,570 | $202,180 | — | 42,790 |
| 22 Software Developers | $135,980 | $214,670 | — | 1,687,890 |
| 23 Physician Assistants | $135,880 | $190,280 | — | 162,150 |
| 24 Aerospace Engineers | $134,960 | $205,890 | — | 67,710 |
| 25 Nuclear Engineers | $133,970 | $196,290 | — | 15,280 |
Reading this ranking
Cardiologists tops the list at $496,010. The midpoint of this ranking is $172,250, so the leader pays 188% more than a typical entry on it — a gap wide enough that the top row is better read as an outlier than as a realistic target.
Pay inside a single occupation varies more than people expect. For cardiologists, the bottom tenth earn $107,190 and the top tenth $712,130 — 6.6× apart. A ranking like this shows the middle; the band is where your own outcome sits.
513 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.