The best and worst jobs in America—maybe (probably not)

April must be a slow month in the job-search racket because that’s when a site called CareerCast releases its annual listing of the top 200 jobs in America.

Last year’s report got a lot of attention among the chattering classes because it had newspaper reporter at No. 200, giving newspaper reporters and former newspaper reporters a handy hook to tweet about: worst job in America! Disclosure: I am a former newspaper reporter.

The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten went so far as to suggest the ratings were manipulated to get that very result. In 2012, newspaper reporter was No. 196.

CareerCast explained its methodology:

To quantify the many facets of the 200 jobs included in our report, we determined and reviewed a wide range of critical aspects and categorized them into four “Core Criteria”—that is, the general categories that are inherent to every job. These are environment, income, outlook and stress.

This year, newspaper reporter has leapfrogged lumberjack and is the 199th best job. Note: In real life, it’s not a good idea to try to leapfrog a lumberjack.

I just want to reiterate what I wrote last year, that this is a good exercise in considering the source and not buying an idea just because there’s “data” behind it. Which data is chosen and how much importance is given to different data points are huge, often subjective decisions. Here’s how I put that a year ago:

CareerCast’s methodology page explains that it took into account four factors that are inherent in any job: environment, income, outlook and stress. Based on data from various sources, mostly governmental, each job type was given a score on a number of elements within each of those four. Data!

But look at my little sub-list again, this time with income included.

49. Social Worker – $41,169
50. Physician Assistant – $89,097
51. Surgeon – $311,078

Income isn’t everything, of course. But is there any way that whatever measures of stress, environment and outlook make social worker a “better” job than surgeon, they’re enough to overcome an income that’s seven and a half times greater? Is it likely that the typical surgeon would be happy to take a job, physician’s assistant, that’s far lower in the hospital hierarchy, with less prestige and a 71 percent salary cut? Because that would be the case if physician’s assistant were actually a “better” job than surgeon. It would be an easy transition. Surgeons are already qualified to be physician’s assistants. They’d be tossing aside their scalpels from coast to coast.