May 2006 Occupational Employment and Wages — 2007-05-17

The highest paying occupations in the U.S. in 2006 included physician specialists, chief executives, dentists, airline pilots, lawyers, air traffic controllers, and engineering managers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor. The lowest paying occupations included combined food preparation and serving workers, fast food cooks, and dishwashers. Occupations with the highest employment in- cluded retail salespersons, cashiers, general office clerks, combined food preparation and serving workers, and registered nurses. Employment and wage information for all occupations is shown in table 1. These data are from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) pro- gram, which provides employment and wage estimates for wage and salary work- ers in 22 major occupational groups and 801 detailed occupations. OES pro- duces data by occupation for the nation, states, and metropolitan areas, and by occupation and industry for the nation. Data are available from the OES homepage at http://www.bls.gov/oes/.