15 Best Jobs You Can Get Without a College Degree
The highest-paying jobs typically require a big investment in education. But you can still follow plenty of good career paths straight out of high school, saving yourself the time and money you'd spend on college and getting yourself paid starting young. Indeed, according to a 2018 report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), there are about 13 million good jobs available for people treading the high school pathway to work, which equates to 20% of all good jobs in the U.S. (Georgetown's CEW defines a "good job" as paying a minimum median of $35,000 a year for workers between ages 25 and 44 and $45,000 for those age 45 to 64.)
To help you pinpoint all those good job opportunities, we got to work on crunching the numbers for you. Focusing on fields that are collecting generous paychecks now and are projected to expand greatly over the next decade, we ranked 773 popular occupations to see which ones offer the most promising futures. These 15 are the top jobs in our rankings that you can score without a college degree.
1. Services Sales Rep*
Total number of jobs: 1.1 million
Projected job growth, 2017-2027: 12.5% (All jobs: 9.7%)
Median annual salary: $51,437 (All jobs: $43,992)
Typical education: High school diploma or equivalent
Everybody's selling something--and businesses in a range of industries continue to need closers. Indeed, employers seeking sales representatives of services that do not fit neatly into Labor Department definitions include such varied names as Fiserv, Lowe's, IBM and JPMorgan Chase. And though online sales may dampen demand for these workers, they remain necessary in building and maintaining a solid
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