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Chaplain
- Median pay: $46,800
- % who say their job is stressful: 92.1%
Many chaplains work in hospitals, police departments, fire departments or in the military, where lives regularly hang in the balance.
"What's wonderful about this job is walking alongside those who are most vulnerable and helping them find their own spirituality and strength," said John Polk, director of chaplaincy for Massachusetts General Hospital.
But then there's also the pressure of dealing with the everyday grief and trauma. Hospital chaplains, for example, often deal with severe injuries or deaths and the stress can really build up.
Then there are patients with long-term chronic conditions that chaplains often must see die.
Polk worked with heart transplant patients who sometimes waited for months in the hospital for a match that never came. Their deaths were particularly wrenching, he said.
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
