Doctors top list of highest-paid jobs in the isles

Working as an animal trainer in Hawaii isn’t going to get you rich.

Neither will a job as a bank teller, food server or retail salesperson.

But if you listened to your parents growing up and became a doctor or a lawyer, chances are you’re doing pretty well financially.

Family and general practitioners have the highest average annual salaries in Hawaii at $228,220, according to a top-100 list by Zippia, a career resource website that culled its data from the May 2015 occupational employment and wage estimates from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even the average entry-level wage for family and general practitioners is nothing to sneeze at: $76,240.

The average annual wage for all 603 entries on the complete Hawaii BLS list of occupations was $47,740 with an average hourly wage of $22.95 for the 619,960 people represented. Some listings are incomplete, such as for musicians and singers, because they generally don’t work year-round. In other cases, salary estimates were not released by people or companies in the professions.

Seven of the top 10 highest average annual salaries are linked to the medical profession. The only exceptions were judges, who came in fourth at $189,300; chief executives, who ranked seventh at $158,870; and postsecondary education administrators, who were 10th at $128,590.

Among the rest of the top 10, physicians and surgeons were second at $218,860, internists were third at $209,180, nurse anesthetists were fifth at $186,330, pediatricians were sixth at $170,400, dentists were eighth at $154,880 and psychiatrists were ninth at $137,790.

Lawyers came in 23rd place with an average annual wage of $104,180.

Occupying the spot at No. 100 were engineering technicians, excluding drafters, who came in at $74,940.

“Everyone’s favorite dentists place No. 8 on the list of highest-paid professions in Hawaii,” Zippia said. “So the next time you sit there while they drill, you can dwell on the fact that they are getting extremely well paid for it.”

But there’s more to consider, especially for college graduates, than where you can make the most money.

“We don’t tell them what the best field is,” said Wendy Sora, director of the Manoa Career Center at the University of Hawaii. “Our students are in 100-plus majors, and their interests vary in what is important to them, where they’re going to be working and what they imagine they’re going to be doing. We want them to take a holistic point of view and not just look at how much they’re going to earn, but what fits their lifestyle, what’s important to them and where they want to live, as well as what kinds of jobs for them have more long-term development and growth. Those are things we’d like them to consider and not just their beginning salary. We want them to know that their careers are made up of a number of things besides salary.”

Sora said it’s important for college students to get a preview of the type of profession they are considering before entering the field.

“We did a study of our graduates, and, based on our study, the majority of our alumni participated in an internship, a co-op, a field study or worked part time before they left the university,” she said. “That’s important in moving on and building their resume and not just jumping into an entry-level position.

“We work with a number of employers who come and recruit and want to work with the UH-Manoa campus. With such a low unemployment rate (3.2 percent in Hawaii), we’ve definitely seen a steady increase of employers from private industry as well as government partners in city, state and federal government who are coming to share information about career opportunities and jobs in the state.”

Sora said the recruiters follow the national trends as far as the majority of jobs they represent.

“They come in from business and professional services, including information technology, engineering, finance and banking,” she said. “Then, of course, we see lots of jobs in the area of retail sales and service.”

Of course, there are more people employed in some of the professions than others, and that can skew the average salaries on the overall list. General and operations managers had the most employees in the top 100, with the 11,080 working in that area earning an average annual wage of $101,630 and ranking in 25th place.

Registered nurses were next in the top-100 list in terms of the number of people employed at 10,990. They ranked 43rd with an average annual wage of $90,130.

Of the complete list of 603 occupations, child care workers had the lowest average annual wage at $20,280 with an average hourly wage of $9.75. That’s just above Hawaii’s minimum wage of $8.50 an hour.

With tourism being the state’s No. 1 industry, it’s not surprising that service jobs employed thousands of people. The average wage, though, was relatively low in professions with an abundance of workers.

Among the lowest were the 11,740 people employed in the combined food preparation and serving workers category, where the average annual wage was $22,230 and the average hourly wage was $10.69. The category includes fast-food workers.

The 14,790 cashiers didn’t fare much better with an average annual wage of $23,520 and an average hourly wage of $11.31.

Food preparation workers, with 8,720 listed, received an average annual wage of $24,290 and an average hourly wage of $11.68.

Janitors and cleaners, except maids and housekeeping cleaners, averaged an annual wage of $26,780 and an hourly wage of $12.87 for the 13,330 people in that profession.

The 24,770 retail salespersons listed fared slightly better at $26,860 for their average annual wage and $12.91 for their average hourly wage.

Waiters and waitresses (15,200 employed), meanwhile, make an average annual wage of $32,480, while bank tellers (1,900 people) are below that at $26,250.

As for being an animal trainer, well, it might be fun to teach new tricks to a cat, dog or even a dolphin, but with an average annual wage of $26,300 for the 80 people employed in that profession, it’s going to be a long journey to easy street.

On the Net:

>> For a complete list of the 603 occupations, go to bit.ly/29u2eka.

HIGHEST PAYING JOBS IN HAWAII

The medical profession dominates the top-paid positions in the state, according to career resource website Zippia, which gathered its data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some occupations found on the BLS list are not included in Zippia’s ranking due to incomplete data.