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Assisted living manager
- Median pay: $40,600
- % who say their job is stressful: 83.9%
Assisted living managers are constantly juggling the needs of residents and their families, while trying to supervise staff and deal with government regulators, according to Nicolette Merino, a regional director of operations for Avamere Health System Care in Wilsonville, Ore.
The hours are long and unpredictable. "You get calls at midnight or five minutes before you're ready to leave for the day," she said.
Yet, there is satisfaction in making sure the elderly are well taken care of. That's a good thing, too. Since budgets are tight at most facilities, assisted living managers often aren't generously compensated for the hard work they do.
Methodology: Starting from a database of more than 9,000 jobs, PayScale used data from over 120,000 respondents who rated their jobs for quality of life factors. The top 15 were selected based on the national median pay for workers with at least five or seven years' experience and the percent of workers surveyed who said their jobs were "fairly stressful" or "extremely stressful." They were then ranked in order of pay, lowest to highest. Only jobs with median pay less than $50,000 were eligible., and only one job per "job family" was included. PayScale conducted the survey between August 2010 and August 2012.
- Last updated March 07 2013 08:59 AM ET
