How stressful is your career? -- FederalSoup.com

Advanced Search

HealthyFed

By Sherkiya Wedgeworth

Blog archive

How stressful is your career?

You don’t have to be a law enforcement officer, work in a hazardous environment or have a job that has heavy physical and high-risk demands to be in a stressful career, many occupations you might not think of can be just as stressful.

Careercast.com — the producer of a popular annual analysis of top careers — releases an annual list of the most stressful jobs and the main factors that contribute to work-related stress.

They use a ranking system that considers 11 different job demands that likely can be expected to evoke stress, and each demand was assigned a range of points as follows:

* Travel, amount of 0-10

* Growth potential (income divided by 100)

* Physical demands (stoop, climb, etc.) 0-14

* Conditions, Environmental 0-13

* Hazards encountered 0-5

* Meeting the public 0-8

* Competitiveness 0-15

* Death (own life at risk) 0-8

* Life of another at risk 0-10

* Deadlines 0-9

* Working in the public 0-5

As expected, firefighters, police officers, enlisted military personnel and airline pilots topped the list as the four most stressful jobs of 2018, but the remaining occupations on the list might be less apparent: event coordinators; journalists; public relations executives; senior corporate executives; and taxi drivers.

The report notes that stress is unavoidable in the workplace, and for any individual employee, it can vary greatly depending on particular working conditions, management styles and co-workers.

Posted by Sherkiya Wedgeworth on May 09, 2018 at 11:51 AM

Reader comments

Mon, Oct 28, 2019

Until one works for a military officer in DOD who has no concept of what his non-DOD work force actually does, one has not experienced the extreme stupidity of most management personnel. To make matters worse, these DOD managers are constantly being moved due to DOD mobility.

Mon, Oct 28, 2019

DOD has good benefits? I worked for DOD for 29 years and endured any number of bad managers. By the way, the grade structure at DOD is a grade below other agencies.

Wed, Jul 10, 2019 Georgia

Ok, Ok, Ok, Management needs to take responsibility, however it is passed down to the "little people" who are constantly being "reminded" that performance will not be mitigated. NO mitigation even when 5+ coworkers leave with-in the fiscal year and you have to pick up the slack. How does management go to sleep at night knowing that good hard workers are stressing over the possibility of losing their jobs,

Thu, Mar 28, 2019

Management hear this and read my lips you are not needed any more and get out of Dodge (federal employment). The big outfit in Bethesda is rank with them and management covers other inept management stooges.

Fri, Nov 2, 2018 Columbus Ohio

I second the comments of this person. "Inept self-serving management minions are responsible for stress/anxiety and low morale of hard working employees. If this administration is serious, get rid of the ineffective number of back stabbing management minions and allow the rank and file employees to do their job without the nonsense they endure on a daily basis. Out with management minions and the good managers left will empower the employees in a constructive way not taking credit for things they never accomplished. Management bloat is like acne, when it goes away life becomes much better". This is a common practice at the DoD sphere. It is a cynical, mean, ambivalent culture where Civilian personnel are treated like the military staff or even worst. Those inept, self-service managers don't know their jobs and they are just a disservice to the organization. The invisible and silent treatments, the constant email attacks and the constant back channeling and backstabbing are the causes of high stress and anxiety in the workforce. Almost everyone I know are on some kind of anti-depressant, or they are heavy drinkers. DoD offers great benefits, but they are infested by a low morale work environment and a poor culture derived by the politics, red tape and the antagonism of the agency. Discrimination at its best! House of cards is just an epilogue to the myriad of issues in this work environment. I am finding myself on a flight or fight mode, throwing scenarios in my head and possible contemplating a career move. But, as someone told me once: "The grass is greener in your septic tank"

Show All Comments