Photographed by Ingalls Photo. If there's one thing to take away from CareerCast's latest ranking of the nation's best jobs, it's that you shouldn't believe a word of it.
Instead of wondering whether you should abandon your optometry practice for a new career as a software engineer, take Danielle Kurtzleben's words at Vox to heart. She breaks down five reasons why these rankings, and others like them, are essentially flawed. How, exactly, do you put a monetary value on something like "job outlook?" How can you definitively say that being a meteorologist is better than being a physicist? And, most importantly, how are we supposed to respond to these lists? Are librarians reading CareerCast struck with the thought that they'd be quantitatively happier if only they were astronomers?
Sure, lists like this are a hoot to read, and it's probably true that museum curators are, in general, more financially secure and happier with their jobs than newspaper reporters (Career Cast's second-to-worst job). Just take it with a grain of salt, and be happy that you're not a lumberjack. (Sorry, lumberjacks.) (Vox)