If you’re thinking of becoming a home health aide, here’s the good news: Nearly 4 million people work in that profession, as of 2024.
And here’s some less encouraging news: The median pay for a home health or personal care aide is only $34,900.
And so it goes for many of the most common jobs in America: Lots of positions, not a lot of pay.
Of the 20 most prevalent jobs in the nation, only two pay six figures, according to data on median salary from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only five pay more than $50,000 a year.
“You’re looking at things like cashiers or home health aides or retail sales,” said Michelle Holder, an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. “Somebody’s got to do it, right? This is a service economy. The jobs are dictated by our wants and needs.”
The big advantage of a common job, of course, is the sheer number of positions. With 3.8 million retail sales jobs out there, you should be able to find one in just about any market.
But even that axiom doesn’t always hold.
“You can’t take it as a guarantee that those jobs will always be easier to find,” said Keith Spencer, a career expert with the resume-writing service Resume Now.
In the Great Recession of 2008, for example, “a lot of people were trying to find a backup job in retail or food service, and those jobs became harder to come by,” Spencer said.
Restaurant counter jobs are plentiful in the United States, but the pay can be low.
If you work one of the most common jobs, you may also find that you are easily replaced.
Of the 10 most prevalent jobs, only two require a bachelor’s degree, according to federal data. One of those occupations is general and operational managers, a gig that paid $102,950 in median income in 2024. The other is registered nurses, with a salary of $93,600.
“Those are the roles where you hear the stories of toxic employers bragging that they could replace anyone at a moment’s notice,” Spencer said.
An adult earning barely $30,000 a year behind a fast-food counter will be hard-pressed to support a family, Holder said.
“You’d need both adults working to achieve middle-class status,” she said. “That’s the downside.”
Some of the nation’s most prevalent jobs will benefit from strong growth in the coming decade. The home health aide occupation, for example, is forecast to grow by 17% between 2024 and 2034, according to the labor bureau.
“Anything that’s tangentially related to health care is going to be an opportunity,” said Lonnie Golden, an economist at Penn State University’s Abington campus.
Other large fields are shrinking. The number of cashiers is projected to decline by 10% over the next decade, amid the rise of self-checkout.
