The best and worst jobs in the United States in 2013

The best and worst jobs in the United States in 2013 The American job recruitment website CareerCast combines income, working environment, work pressure, physical needs...

For Pete Rossi, he can count on one hand the number of weeks he worked more than 50 hours this year. For the rest of the time, his job as an actuary for the U.S. Department of Defense allowed him to live a high-quality life with minimal pressure.

This is one of the reasons why actuaries top the list of the best jobs in America. That's the result of the latest survey from job search website CareerCast.com, which was released on Tuesday. Biomedical engineers ranked second, and software engineers, who topped the list in 2012, are now ranked third. Jobs at the bottom of the list include active-duty military, lumberjacks and newspaper reporters.

CareerCast.com is a job search website owned by Adicio Inc. The website ranked 200 occupations based on five factors: physical requirements, work environment, income, work pressure and career prospects. In determining the ranking order, the website uses data from government departments such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As in previous years, these 200 occupations were selected based on their level of demand in the current labor market and the availability of reliable data.

The job of an actuary is to give an economic value to risk. For example, the possibility of a hurricane destroying an oceanfront villa, or the long-term liabilities of a pension system. Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com, said the actuarial profession is booming in a world filled with risks, both natural and man-made. He also said that there is currently a huge talent gap for actuaries, so their salaries are still rising. (According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median salary for actuaries in 2010 was $87,650.)

Rossi, 31, spends his days calculating the Pentagon’s future costs in pension, medical and education benefits. But he said the job involves more than just tinkering with spreadsheet data. He also communicates with other government departments and holds brainstorming sessions with colleagues on financial models.

Several jobs that serve the financial and medical needs of the aging population have made it into the top 10 this year, including audiologists, financial planners and physical therapists, Li said.

Want to know what the worst jobs of 2013 are? Newspaper reporter, with his embarrassing traits, has replaced lumberjack as the worst job of the year.

Li said the journalist profession has been ranked low for some time (ranked 196th out of 200 professions last year). He said that being pushed to the bottom this time was probably due to some worsening conditions, such as deteriorating career prospects, continued decline in average salary, and continued increase in working hours. Moreover, these factors also made journalists more stressed.

But not all reporters, such as the author myself, agree with this final assessment.

Rocco LaDuca is a crime and courts reporter for the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, New York. He said that he chose to be a reporter partly because of his fond memories of reading newspapers with his grandmother.

Pay is an issue, he said (the median annual salary for journalists was $36,000 in 2010). He didn't know if he could support his family and send his children to college on a reporter's salary. And it’s also true that the stress and hours of a journalist can be exhausting. But he said, "I'm not sure if I would be happy if I changed my job, and I can't think of any job that would make me feel as excited or as fulfilling as being a reporter."