Life expectancy is impacted by numerous factors, from your genes and the place you live to personal behaviors like eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise.
You might be aware of these factors, but one longevity-related variable you might not have considered is your profession.
After all, the average person spends about a third of their life working (roughly 90,000 hours) — naturally, the activities you engage in and the workplace you spend time in for a third of your life have major implications for your overall lifespan.
Read on for our explanation of what the latest data says about which professions live the longest, which have the shortest life expectancies, and which jobs are the most dangerous and stressful.
What Profession Has the Longest Life Expectancy?
Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the data to definitively state which profession has the longest life expectancy. However, we can infer that certain groups of workers have longer life expectancies than others.
For instance, white-collar workers have longer life expectancies than blue-collar workers, writes Bloomberg, and that life expectancy gap is continuing to get larger.
In addition, higher-earning workers live longer than lower-income workers, a fact that isn’t surprising when you consider the strong role of socioeconomic status in longevity. After all, men in the top 1% of wealth live almost 15 years longer than men in the bottom 1%, according to CNN.
Finally, working in a high-stress profession could shorten your life expectancy by as much as 33 years. To find the profession that’s likely to have the longest life expectancy, then, it makes sense to use Business News Daily’s list of the least stressful jobs (in order from least to most stressful):
- Diagnostic medical sonographer
- Compliance officer
- Hair stylist
- Audiologist
- Tenured university professor
- Medical records technician
- Jeweler
- Operations research analyst
- Pharmacy technician
- Massage therapist
We lack the data to assess life expectancy by profession or definitively state that any of the professions on the list above have the longest life expectancy. However, the fact that the jobs on that list are low-stress means they’re less likely to shorten life expectancy.
In addition, as we’ve already stated, higher-income, white-collar professions likely also have longer life expectancies than lower-income, blue-collar professions.
What Profession Has the Shortest Life Expectancy?
Although at present, there isn’t data available specifically showing which profession has the shortest life expectancy, we do know which jobs are the most dangerous. Working at a dangerous job severely increases your likelihood of fatal and non-fatal injuries, so it can be assumed to decrease your life expectancy.
According to Forbes, the most dangerous profession in America is being a logging worker. This involves the use of heavy equipment to cut down forests to harvest raw building materials, even in inclement weather. They have a fatal injury rate of 82 per 100,000 workers and a non-fatal injury rate of 3.1 per 100 workers.
Among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America (which are listed in the next section), 82 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers is the highest fatal injury rate — so it’s likely that long-term logging workers have among the shortest life expectancies of any profession.
The Top 10 Most Stressful and Dangerous Jobs
Although America’s most stressful jobs and most dangerous jobs naturally have some overlap, they’re two separate categories, so we’ll describe them separately.
According to Business News Daily, here are the top 10 most stressful jobs in America, from most to least stressful:
- Enlisted military personnel
- Firefighter
- Airline pilot
- Police officer
- Broadcaster
- Event coordinator
- Newspaper reporter
- Public relations executive
- Senior corporate executive
- Taxi driver
And here are the country’s most dangerous jobs, courtesy of Forbes:
- Logging worker
- Fishing/hunting worker
- Roofer
- Aircraft pilot/flight engineer
- Structural iron or steel worker
- Delivery or truck driver
- Refuse and recyclable material collector
- Underground mining machine operator
- Construction trade worker
- Electrical power-line installer/repairer
Are You Ready To Lean Into Life Expectancy?
The Life Expectancy Calculator team draws on the latest research and data to create our models, ensuring they’re as accurate and reliable as possible.
If you’re wondering what your own life expectancy might be, it’s worth checking out the Life Expectancy Calculator. After all, there’s a reason they say “knowledge is power” — once you know your current life expectancy, you can consider measures to extend it.
Stay tuned for even more posts diving down various fascinating, life expectancy-related rabbit holes!
