US occupational wages · BLS, May 2025

The $800 line

America's twenty best-paid occupations, ranked by median hourly pay. Drag the marker to any rate and watch where it lands — $800 an hour sits three times beyond the highest-paid job in the entire federal wage survey.

Highest paid

$268.76

Pediatric surgeons

Twentieth

$113.75

Nurse anesthetists

All US workers

$33.54

Average of 155 million

Your marker

$800

3.0× the top job

Marker rate

$800

At or above the marker Below it Marker · $1.66M a year at 40 hrs/wk

Out-earns all twenty.

The top is flatter than you'd think

First place to twentieth spans $155 an hour. The drop from twentieth place to an ordinary American wage is $80 — but as a multiple, it's far larger.

Every one of them is a clinician

Nineteen physicians and dentists, then nurse anesthetists. No lawyer, executive, engineer or pilot earns a high enough median wage to break in.

$800 isn't a wage

At that level, money arrives as billings and profit share — senior law-firm partners bill $1,500–$2,500 an hour — none of which a wage survey records.