With inflation reaching record highs, and economic crisis looming above us, our lives are getting tighter. Most people are already feeling it: from increased rent and ridiculous gas prices, to things many people took for granted, like morning frappuccinos and sushi takeaways, now becoming luxuries.
So when every little penny counts, you gotta hustle. In order to get us all some ideas how to survive in this gloomy economy, we looked at these two illuminating Reddit threads (this and this). People are sharing overlooked yet well (some unexpectedly!) paying jobs that desperately need workers right now, so it may give you some ideas for money-making career prospects.
Psst! After you’re done, be sure to check out our previous article about the easiest legal ways to make money on the side!
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Self employed cleaning services (i dont know exaclty what to call it)
My parents started getting paid $35 an hour cleaning a community center to ~$50 from cleaning offices.
My mom started it then my dad joined in to help her with the hours and taking care of the house and kids.
Eventually my mom got good contacts, and started cleaning the offices of managers from factories, Sacramento politicians, and stuff alike.
Can't express how proud i am of my mom. She turned all those shitty Hispanic cleaning lady jokes into something brag worthy.
I work as a lunch lady.
I get school vacations off, summers off, and weekends. No nights, or even really afternoons, it's amazing. I also get benefits, and every year I get a raise, so between the money and the time off, the job is 100% worth it.
Garbage collectors in New York are paid up to $112k, a solid salary considering you don’t even need a degree. Sounds like a nice fallback plan for me.
Try a few months in a city without garbage collectors and then ask yourself if they're worth every penny.
If you've ever wondered what are the highest-paying jobs out there in this crazy job market right now, pull your seat closer.
According to recently updated data shared by Indeed, the top 3 best-paid jobs are as follows: cardiologist with a national average salary of $351,827 per year, anesthesiologist with $326,296 per year and an orthodontist with $264,850 per year. Understandably, these jobs are not something you can easily swap your career for and require years of preparation.
If you have a strong stomach, cleaning up death and crime scenes pays very well and requires little education.
They deserve every penny, they have extremely high rates of PTSD, because they see the outcome of some very tragic deaths and often have to do the cleaning around the family of the decedent, and iirc the average length of tenure in that job it 8 months because of it. They often have to do very physically demanding jobs fully suited up in PPE which can be extremely uncomfortable.
Plumbers, they can charge 100$ an hour easy because people are stupid about regular things.
Great money in pressure washing/exterior cleaning.
Also, gutter cleaning. $100/hr is no problem on gutter cleaning. Requires no skill, and minimal equipment. If you’re ever broke, buy a ladder and clean gutters.
And the neighborhood kids that used to go around asking if they could mow lawns are now walking with power washers and make bank.
If you are still wondering what career path to choose, it’s wise to look at the most in-demand jobs right now. According to indeed, based on 1M job postings, machine learning engineers who’re responsible for programming and deploying machine learning solutions have the biggest demand in the market. These careers have had a 344% growth in job postings since 2015, making it the top in-demand job right now. The average base salary for a machine learning engineer is $146,085.
Mobile crane operator, union guys pull over 200k and its a trade thats pretty easy on the body.
I’m a gardener. There’s a serious lack of folks willing to do manual labour in the outdoors year-round. Most commercial properties have to maintain a certain amount of green area in our city. Hospitals and other places like that need legitimate crews to do the work with professionalism (no cat calling or spitting or swearing etc) including bonded employees and good insurance and equipment etc.
As a result we are in demand and we get paid surprisingly well. No university education needed, low barrier to entry, great pay and job security.
I'm a petsitter & I make pretty good cash from it during the busy times (summer & holidays) for very little effort in some cases. I've been doing it for a few years now & after busting my a*s & whoring my time out to clients & their critters I've built a great client base and can relax a bit now. Of course I work a full time job too, petsitting isn't steady enough to rely on but I can make an extra $5-600 a month when it's busy. It gets hectic figuring out the timing between the two jobs sometimes but it's so worth it. I'm currently petsitting for a week, $245 to hang out with two adorable dogs, eat their food, drink the wine they bought me, and relax. I love what I do.
"hang out with two adorable dogs, eat their food..." No thanks, I think I'll stick with people food.
The second most in-demand career is a full stack developer. This position requires a person to have a wide skillset and be able to work in front and back-end development with a variety of programming languages. Indeed states that these developers are in high demand, capturing 828 out of every 1M job postings. Full stack developers earn an average salary of $114,316 per year.
Waterslide tester, the rides are already confirmed to be safe enough for humans to ride. You're basically getting paid to ride on a safe waterslide and give feedback.
I was a bathroom attendant in a fancy restaurant. Made hundred of dollars a night in cash to do next to nothing.
Collecting golf balls. Saw on the news a guy makes over $250,000 traveling around and using scuba gear getting golf balls.
The third most in-demand career right now is realtor. Realtors play an integral role in helping people to buy and sell property. There has been an incredible 138% increase in job postings for realtors since 2015, which should be surprising considering the booming real estate market. Although most realtors work on a commission basis, the average salary earned is around $96,820, Indeed states.
Technical writing. If you have the ability to take complex technical information and simplify it according to the reading audience, you can make well over $100K annually.
People ridicule English degrees until they find out how much can be earned as a technical writer.
Medical illustrator.
You know like the anatomical drawings in scientific journals and such, the people behind that make a pretty good living. My friend dated one for a while and I was surprised how well she was doing.
Yeah, but ya gotta have the talent to draw well. Some folks (me) can barely draw a stick figure.
Skill trades. You don't need a 4year degree. Some programs are less than a year. Not everyone needs to be an engineer. Go be a welder, electrician, machine repair, or a pipe fitter.
This.All this. College is an expensive scam. A lot of knowledge learned in the trades can be used in other places. Im not a plumber, but I can repair my homes plumbing because I learned basic plumbing skills where I work. You can save money because you learn to fix your own stuff.
I drive machinery in a coal mine in Australia. I make about 170k. Even our new trainees are paid pretty well, about $48 per hour. I think it ends up being close to 90-100k. Easy money for sitting on your a**e in an air conditioned cab.
Becoming a locksmith changed my life. Well paid and I get to help people out I love it
Q: Who are you and how did you get in here? A: I'm the locksmith and I'm the locksmith
Utility lineman. There is a developing shortage nationwide due to baby boom retirements. It's well paid base, but the overtime is fabulous.
NO thanks - have watched life on the line - high risk of death, especially for a clumsy sod like me
I am a lineman for the county And I drive the main road Searchin' in the sun for another overload
My dad was a lineman for 25 years. It is very dangerous, and he had to be out in every storm which terrified me. He certainly did not get rich and overtime in the 50's, 60's and early 70's was not what it is now. His best friend committed suicide by grabbing a live wire. My dad was in the bucket with him.
Different uncle from the one mentioned in another post did this for a short while. Came within a hair's breadth of being electrocute. Family begged him to find a different job and he did
I worked for a federal energy organization. Lineman with overtime make more than electrical engineers.
Court reporting. Stenography is a tough skill to learn, but plenty of court reporters earn over $100k. And no college degree required (although most CRs will need to be certified).
This is a risky job field to start in at this time. Automated voice stenography is not far from being perfected and once it is, the need for stenographers is going to plummet along with the salaries.
UPS drivers can make close to 100k if you stay there long enough.
But the stress of finishing your route and you don't start as a driver. You have to work your way up to being a driver
I work at home as a closed captioner broadcaster for the News. I make my own schedule and make between $35-$65 per hour depending on the job. Large investment to get started but significantly worth the payout.
Environmental Inspector in the Oil and Gas industry. Make $200,000 a year saving the planet.
Landscape lighting installation, never knew the industry existed. Now I love it and hope to run my own company someday.
Even better, how about focusing on environmentally-friendly, dark-sky compliant plans and fixtures?
Scrum masters in software development industry. They are paid 6 figures for basically setting up meetings and being cheer leaders. They don't have any responsibility for delivery of work and they don't have any work beyond what I described.
Update: I am talking about a dedicated scrum master who does absolutely nothing else but be a scrum master.
Update 2: I agree with you when you say you hate that this position exists as an individual entity and do believe that having one person just do this is wasteful.
Update 3: I am specifically referring to Scrum masters. Project Managers and engineering managers and POs are not included in this.
Hotdog vendors can earn 6 figures in a year
I think the operative word here is probably “can” - surely a lot of factors at play here.
Dog groomer. It’s a weird industry, though, and a skill that really has to be learned hands-on (grooming schools can be a good start, but I know great groomers that never went to school for it, and terrible groomers that spent thousands on classes). Just being good at handling dogs is the best foundation for success.
It’s not the easiest job in the world. It’s largely commission-based, and you’re lucky if you get any benefits out of it, but if you get enough practice in to be good at it and build up a loyal clientele base in a decently affluent area, it’s good money. The haircuts I do range from $70-$175, and I’m paid 50%, which averages out to around $30-$35 an hour most days. Not everyone tips, but those that do usually tip $5-$20 per dog, and because I do about 40 dogs in an average week, that’s an extra couple hundred in my pocket.
So if you don’t mind working on your feet all day, sustaining repetitive motion injuries, not taking lunch breaks, dealing with insane customers, and picking s**t off dog buttholes, it’s a good living.
Did you know people put gutters on their houses to catch the rain as it falls off the roof? I didn’t either until a guy walked up to me and handed me a job doing it. Turns out making $300-600 a day is an every day thing doing it piece rate in Florida.
Underwater welding pays a tremendous amount.
The only one I know personally retired comfortably in his 40's.
You have to spend all day in heavy gear underwater and frequently get shocked
Funeral Director is a great paying job with not a whole lot of schooling. That’s what I do and I make about $75,000.
Ice, producing Ice with industrial machines and selling it to people who export food makes you about 3k per day(about 60 tons of ice sold per day)
Oil rig workers.
I've seen payrolls for BP oil and its contractors. To give a sense of scale, they get paid well enough that one of the corporate lawyers quit his lawyer job and became an oil rig worker.
Power point guru. I ask for about $80/hr as a freelance designer just because these corporate suits never learned how operate basic software to make a decent presentation... which they all ubiquitously and consistently need.
Welding is a huge one. It is very hard to find good welders. There are also some specialty welding jobs that most people don't know of, such as marine under water welding. Yes it's a real thing and pays stupid money.
Airline dispatcher.
A girl I dated many years ago I met because she was living in my town training to be an airline dispatcher. There are just a handful of schools that teach it.
I had no idea what an airline dispatcher was, let alone how much money they get paid. Dispatchers at FedEX can make $150,000 per year or more. It also gives you a lot of options to advance at an airline, like being station chief at an airline.
The girl I dated had a dream to one day be Air France Station Chief in Tahiti. I don't know if she made it or not.
Talk to anyone in the ATCA. Oh wait Reagan fired them all and killed the whole union. Pardon but still bitter.
Longshoremen. If you are a senior member of a union you make absolute cake. $180k plus a year.
Known a few of them over the years. They work seriously hard for that cash.
I fix hospital beds , will be making 100k within my first two years with full benefits. I also have full control over my hours.
Train Driver for London Underground.
Heavily unionized industry, and London's dependency on the network means they've been able to demand an enviable package. High base pay, high over time rates, and travel passes for the family.
Not always - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/24/london-underground-workers-vote-continue-strike-action
Autopsy tech. I started out making $15 an hour in Illinois. Just need a high school diploma and the ability to not puke at the sight of blood and guts. I loved that job, only left because I needed surgery on my knee. I'd totally still be doing that if I lived in a town with a morgue now, but I live in the Alaskan bush. Anybody needing an autopsy just gets sent to Anchorage.
Addendum; to everyone bitching about $15 an hour being nothing, this was in 2009. Yeah it probably isn't enough to have a family on but I was a 19 year old and it was my first job.
My uncle was a gardener at the airport and got paid around 40$ an hour so thats pretty good
Costco. Five years full-time and you’re at $25/hr. Starting rate is $15/hr for everybody. Supervisors start at $25/hr and entry level managers make $60K-$80K. All employees get benefits, 401K and stock options, and topped out employees get bonuses.
Costco seems to be one of the few big box retail companies that actually cares about their employees.
Car dealership security. I work 2 days a week and make almost double what I made in 5 days at my old job.
Janitor in the public sector.
Did this for 15 years. I got to work with mostly idiots cleaning up after idiots. Was making $30 an hour when I quit. Best decision I ever made. Not worth it.
At the right place waitressing. I got tipped $800 waitressing at a bowling alley for a team building company party.
For real, in the right place. You gotta cut your teeth on the wrong places for years first.
Sign language interpreters, you can make $30 or more an hour depending on your client and education
With more and more people losing their hearing, we definitely need more people to teach and interpret ASL.
YouTubers who just copy reddit posts into a voice thing and then upload it with the text on the background.
Edit: For those saying people who actually speak and make it unique aren't that bad. I agree, I still don't watch them but I agree. My point is those YouTubers who literally just copy and paste text into a text to speach program they found on the internet.
Ditch digger... actually, “directional boring.” Guy I know was literally a ditch digger, but got into this by renting the specialized equipment just at the right time and right place (fiber optic build-out in the 1990’s). He will also say that he “made it” simply by being reliable and trustworthy. I do not know exactly how much he makes, but he has an 80-foot sport fisherman (probably cost $7-10 *Million*) and he bought a $4 Million property on a whim.
Working is logistics! Warehouse, purchasing supplies, etc. I have been doing this for 8 years and have a Masters degree in Supply Chain. It's super easy to me. All you really need to do is pay attention. Plus , it's great money.
I clean residents rooms at an old age home and make almost $21 an hour. I basically just sanitize touch surfaces and scrub their toilet. Very minimal work.
Truck drivers. They’re always needed, and if you live in the US with nothing to lose or leave behind, North Dakota is the new frontier. Lumber, mining, oil, and agriculture is all tied together with trucking.
I don't know if this is true in other cities but T and bus operators in Boston make bank. I've rarely met a higher paid, less engaged group of employees in my life and I work in recruiting.
EDIT: here is an article on the subject of MBTA salaries.
https://www.masslive.com/news/boston/2018/02/mbta_employee_salary_database.html
Idk if surprising but one people dont think about. Selling ad space on local broadcast stations. I do it and make more than most families do in my area and I'm at smaller market. Going into a medium one can put you well into 6 figures
School bus drivers. My grandfather was a school bus driver and he says it pays surprisingly well. All you are doing is sitting on your a*s driving around and you get paid $30 an hour. However you still have to clean the kids' slimy disgustingness afterwards.
I want to unalive (wink) quietly in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his bus.
Sales.
My last sales job I was selling flooring. It took me about an hour to an hour and a half measuring each room and hallway. Talk with the homeowner to know what they want. We offered financing for everyone. All my leads were red hot, so everyone I was scheduled to meet with was ready to buy that day. Each sale was $5,000 and up. I had sales of over $20,000 and my commission check was anywhere from 5 to 25% of that sale. I even had up to five scheduled appointments a day. I have had days where I made three sales with an average commission of $500 each.
Electric Linemen. It’s potentially dangerous work and you need to be comfortable with working in heights in in crappy weather, but you can easily make $200k in your first year AND they’ll train you to do the job.
If I was a young guy starting out I’d be all over that career path.
Edit: If you live in California and Nevada and would like a path forward in this career then check these guys out - https://www.calnevjatc.org
Software sales.
Sell to F500 companies and a very standard below average pre tax take home is $200k.
Good reps average more like $400k.
I did this for years selling to Fortune 500 companies and large financial institutions. Yes, I made some good money many years but it was ultimately the most stressful and soul-sucking work one might imagine. I'm now a carpenter and get satisfaction at the end of most day by seeing my accomplishments. Not as much money but my soul is intact...
Network engineers make roughly 300K a year with epic job security. Turns out network engineering requires you to take everything you've learned about coding... And throw it out the window.
In some states corrections officers make insane money with just a GED and willingness to work overtime.
NO NO NO NO! Corrections may pay well but it will turn you into a monster. When you start to see some people as less than human you start to see a lot more. Corrections does terrible things to your psyche.
Trader Joe’s managers. General managers of stores make $100,000+. Assistant store managers make 60,000-80,000/year. Not bad for working grocery.
Bartending. Some people know, but the overwhelming majority don't. If I only worked 20 hours, 2 days a week this year (weekends) I would make close to $50k. If I really tried and worked 2 solid jobs 5 days a week I would easily hit close to if not over $100k. This doesn't apply to every bar or bartender. You're not going to make this type of money at an applebees or a super franchised corporate establishment.
There is a job in my country called "chicken sexer". You're paid something like 10k euros per "mission" to touch newborn chicks and determine their sex.
If you are from a less developed country which has little parkings and could not attend school you can become a guard for cars set up in a large area of about 20 cars and charge a dollar for car sometimes they can give you up to 4 dollars a car and this is every 30 minutes for about 12 hours which would give you about 500-1000 dollars for a day of doing basically nothing
San Francisco poop patrol. A ten person team, all they do is go around the city and clean up human feces (which is apparently a problem there). They make about 80,000 a year, plus pensions and benefits which bring the total to about 150,000. Not even kidding. Let’s go scoop poop!
Document specialist for utilities. Basically you have to know someone to get into it, but I went from making <40k as an office admin to 120k as a doc specialist. No college requirement, often people just get their spouses or siblings on because they've worked in an office before. As a general rule, this is terrible for anyone who actually knows what they're doing in the job, but, like... Whatever. A lot of times I'm just getting paid to hold down a desk.
Mining, the job is crazy dangerous but you get paid really good nowdays. Nice to see things changed from the past
Truckers, and no not the cross country truckers which are kinda almost a minority. The drivers I'm talking about are the ones who are delivering to restaurants and whatnot. You can make $60,000-$100,000 a year easily. But now that u think about it yeah this would expectedpy pay well because imagine if all trucks stopped moving for one day.
Edit: I obviously meant $60,000 not $60, edited because of a smartass.
In France, it's 12€ an hour max....truckers are going on strike, companies go ''no one wants to work anymore, we can't hire blablabla...''
Redbubble. There’s probably a saying floating out there that goes “wherever there are gullible people, there is profit”. If not, then I just coined it. I’ve been putting memes on redbubble and I’m making $200-400 every month. I literally do nothing besides laughing at memes, putting them on a website, and waiting for people to buy it. This much money is enough for groceries or going out with the lads monthly.
I'm on redbubble, I was referred by a friend who's also on redbubble. I've been on it for months uploading images, my own images, with not one sale. Even though redbubble doesn't moderate usage of copyrighted works by other people, there's still a risk of being found out by the content owner.
Those terrible kids “shows” on YouTube. Millions of views and subscribers translates to millions of dollars.
Licensed welders make bank, it's a hard job in poor conditions but if you're willing to do it you can make six figures within a few years.
Military officer. You'll never be rich, but I was way better off than my civilian peers in our 20s. Also medical benefits, and retirement after 20 years. Pay scales are online.
Teaching Assistant
I was paid surprisingly well for about 10 hours of work a week. Plus they covered my tuition and gave me better dental insurance than the rest of my family
It depends on where you live and the company you work for, but work for a ferry company, or maybe a cruiseship (but do research, some cruiseship lines may not be as great). I work for a ferry company and work on a rotation of two weeks on, two weeks off. It's a 12 hour day but I don't even notice and they go by fast. I live on the boat during those two weeks and have my own little cabin to unwind in, I have free access to the food on board and get to travel for free on their boats. I get a decent paycheck each time. Yes some of these jobs listed are hard and can cause strain, but you also need to look at what you get in return. And if you take care of your body, there is less damage. I know it's cheesy but exercise and eat good food!
If you have experience in customer service, places like Cumberland Farms, 7-11 and other retail gas stations offer store manager training and it takes just a few months. You can apply right off the street if you have basic management training at fast food or elsewhere. You get a bump once you take position. I made 82K a year to start. You get crazy bonuses every 4 months. The problem is the hours. I worked a 12 hour shift every day and I was on salary. And if you have callouts-expect to cover them yourself a lot of the time. If you are someone who is even remotely personable, it's a fantastic opportunity. I quit because I couldn't take the hours anymore (i'd work 2am -2pm and then come back and close whenever someone called out. At one point I was dealing with call outs constantly and I hadn't had a day off in 3 months). Most managers didn't have a lot of the issues I did. I was great at the back office stuff. I had the best profits in town but I didn't have patience for my employees.
I quit being a nurse and now work in the seafood department of a huge chain store. Make alot of money for something I didn't need an education for and I deal with way less people and death now. Bad side ... I smell like a fish after work. Lol.
I'll add medical imaging! X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, Cath lab, and more are only 2 years at community college and depending on your specialty start around $50k a year! And because these jobs are usually associated with health systems you usually get good benefits and health insurance to boot
It depends on where you live and the company you work for, but work for a ferry company, or maybe a cruiseship (but do research, some cruiseship lines may not be as great). I work for a ferry company and work on a rotation of two weeks on, two weeks off. It's a 12 hour day but I don't even notice and they go by fast. I live on the boat during those two weeks and have my own little cabin to unwind in, I have free access to the food on board and get to travel for free on their boats. I get a decent paycheck each time. Yes some of these jobs listed are hard and can cause strain, but you also need to look at what you get in return. And if you take care of your body, there is less damage. I know it's cheesy but exercise and eat good food!
If you have experience in customer service, places like Cumberland Farms, 7-11 and other retail gas stations offer store manager training and it takes just a few months. You can apply right off the street if you have basic management training at fast food or elsewhere. You get a bump once you take position. I made 82K a year to start. You get crazy bonuses every 4 months. The problem is the hours. I worked a 12 hour shift every day and I was on salary. And if you have callouts-expect to cover them yourself a lot of the time. If you are someone who is even remotely personable, it's a fantastic opportunity. I quit because I couldn't take the hours anymore (i'd work 2am -2pm and then come back and close whenever someone called out. At one point I was dealing with call outs constantly and I hadn't had a day off in 3 months). Most managers didn't have a lot of the issues I did. I was great at the back office stuff. I had the best profits in town but I didn't have patience for my employees.
I quit being a nurse and now work in the seafood department of a huge chain store. Make alot of money for something I didn't need an education for and I deal with way less people and death now. Bad side ... I smell like a fish after work. Lol.
I'll add medical imaging! X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, Cath lab, and more are only 2 years at community college and depending on your specialty start around $50k a year! And because these jobs are usually associated with health systems you usually get good benefits and health insurance to boot
