{"id":96636,"date":"2026-10-09T03:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/?p=96636"},"modified":"2026-09-26T10:18:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T14:18:33","slug":"top-10-highest-paying-jobs-2035-96636","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/top-10-highest-paying-jobs-2035-96636\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs by 2035 (AI Changes Everything)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most job forecasts miss the shift happening right now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a> projects 750,000 office and administrative support jobs will disappear by 2035. Meanwhile, other careers will grow over 40%. The difference isn’t about which jobs AI can do\u2014it’s about which jobs AI makes more valuable.<\/p>\n

The structural change few discuss: AI’s physical footprint. Data centers, chip factories, and power plants need people who manage construction, operate machinery, and keep systems running. The AI economy isn’t just code. It’s concrete, steel, and megawatts. That reshapes who gets hired and what they earn.<\/p>\n

Below are the 10 fastest-growing occupations with median salaries over $100,000, ranked from lowest to highest median pay. Each includes its AI exposure score\u2014how much of the work AI could<\/a> potentially assist\u2014because exposure isn’t risk.<\/p>\n

#10: Management Analysts<\/h2>\n

These consultants help companies restructure operations. Median salary: $109,000. Growth: 94,000 new jobs.<\/p>\n

AI exposure is very high. Research, slide decks, recommendations\u2014exactly what generative AI<\/a> does well. So why the growth? Every company is trying to reorganize around AI, and most have no clue how. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella<\/a> put it plainly in June: “What about reorganizing jobs?” Someone gets paid to do that reorganization. Management analysts are the easiest hire on this list.<\/p>\n

#9: Health Specialties Teachers<\/h2>\n

The least glamorous bet that pays off big. These instructors train nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, and physician assistants. Growth: nearly 18%. Median salary: $110,000.<\/p>\n

Clinical training requires supervised human hours. You cannot scale that with a chatbot. As healthcare adds a third of all new US jobs, someone must teach those millions of new workers. The catch: you need a doctoral or professional degree. This is a decade-long play, not a six-month pivot.<\/p>\n

#8: Construction Managers<\/h2>\n

They run job sites\u2014budgets, schedules, subcontractors, inspectors. Growth: 55,000 new jobs. Median salary: $112,000.<\/p>\n

Every AI announcement becomes a construction project. Jensen Huang told Fox Business in August that “hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created right now” in chip and AI factories. AT&T is spending $38 billion over five years on skilled trades workers. If you were told the safe path is behind a screen, this decade may prove otherwise.<\/p>\n

#7: Data Scientists<\/h2>\n

Third-fastest-growing occupation in the US. Projected to go from 275,000 to 371,000 by 2035. Median salary: $113,000.<\/p>\n

AI can write code and run analyses. What it cannot do is decide which question is worth asking and whether the answer is trustworthy enough to bet the company on. Andrew Ng explained the economics on this podcast in August: “The 60% that the human does became even more valuable because it’s an economic complement to the 30-40% that just got cheaper.” The middle\u2014data cleaning, first-pass modeling\u2014automates. The two ends stay human.<\/p>\n

#6: Medical and Health Services Managers<\/h2>\n

They run clinics, hospital departments, nursing units. Growth: 24.2%, adding 155,000 jobs. Median salary: $115,000.<\/p>\n

Two forces collide: healthcare demand from an aging population, and the most administratively broken sector in the developed world. Someone who understands both clinical operations and the business side is the bottleneck. Bottlenecks get paid. You do not need medical school\u2014just a bachelor’s and the ability to manage stressed people.<\/p>\n

#5: Information Security Analysts<\/h2>\n

Growth: 21%. Median salary: $120,000.<\/p>\n

Standard explanation: more hackers, more cybersecurity jobs. True but incomplete. AI made attacks cheap\u2014convincing phishing in perfect English, voice cloning, automated vulnerability scanning. At the same time, companies are shoving AI into everything, creating entirely new categories of risk. Nobody has a playbook for that. Only about 14,000 openings per year, so genuinely competitive, but the most accessible high-paying job on this list without a heavy academic path.<\/p>\n

#4: Nurse Practitioners<\/h2>\n

Median salary: $132,000. Growth: 41%\u2014the fastest-growing occupation in the United States. Not a tech job. Not an AI job. A nurse with a master’s degree.<\/p>\n

The BLS classifies this as high AI exposure. Yet it is the fastest-growing occupation in the country. That is the strongest evidence that exposure and risk are different things. AI can draft notes, flag interactions, summarize charts. It cannot examine a patient, take legal responsibility for a diagnosis, or sit with a frightened person for 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

#3: Physician Assistants<\/h2>\n

Low AI exposure. Growth: 20%, adding 35,000 jobs. Median salary: $136,000.<\/p>\n

Of all 831 occupations the BLS evaluated, physician assistants sit in the lowest quartile for AI exposure. The government’s reading\u2014partly based on what people actually ask Claude and Copilot\u2014is that these tasks are among the least affected by current AI. $136,000, growing 21%, low exposure. Almost no other combination like this exists in the data.<\/p>\n

#2: Software Developers<\/h2>\n

Median salary: $135,000. Growth: 10%, adding 95,000 openings per year. Very high AI exposure.<\/p>\n

The job the internet has been writing obituaries for is projected to add 174,000 jobs\u2014the largest absolute gain of any occupation paying over $100,000. The picture is mixed. TechCrunch found engineering hiring at big tech dropped only 11% while total hiring fell 25%. The Indeed Hiring Lab found software job postings up 15% since Claude Code launched, but 71% of that gain was senior roles. The work is growing. The entry point is narrowing.<\/p>\n

#1: Computer and Information Systems Managers<\/h2>\n

Median salary: $175,000. Growth: 15.8%, adding 108,000 jobs. Very high AI exposure.<\/p>\n

These are the people who decide what the company builds, buys, and retires. IT directors, engineering managers, mid-market CTOs. A huge part of the job is documents, planning, review, and communications\u2014and it is still growing nearly 16% at the top of the pay scale.<\/p>\n

The scarce resource in 2026 is no longer the ability to produce technical output. AI made that cheap. What is scarce is judgment under uncertainty and accountability for outcomes. Deciding what to build, being blamed when something fails, choosing what not to build\u2014that is where the money concentrates.<\/p>\n

The Five Fastest-Declining Occupations<\/h2>\n

All five are classified as very high AI exposure:<\/p>\n