# Pay and pressure: across 609 occupations, higher pay is only weakly linked to more measured pressure

Across 609 U.S. occupations, higher-paying jobs score only slightly higher on TryHired's measured pressure level, and occupations at the same pay level differ from each other more than the pay levels differ from one another.

## Findings
- Across 609 U.S. occupations, higher median pay is only weakly associated with higher measured work pressure: the Spearman rank correlation is 0.11 (95% bootstrap interval 0.02 to 0.19), using TryHired's pressure level built from four O*NET 31.0 work-context ratings and BLS OEWS May 2025 wages.
- The median pressure level of each fifth of occupations by pay falls between 3.03 and 3.23 on O*NET's 1-to-5 scale, a spread of 0.20 points (O*NET 31.0 work context; OEWS May 2025).
- Within every pay fifth, the middle half of occupations spans at least 0.38 points of pressure level, more than the 0.20-point spread between the medians of the five pay fifths (O*NET 31.0 work context; OEWS May 2025).

## Method
609 O*NET occupations, at least 10,000 jobs each. Pressure level = mean of four O*NET work-context ratings (1-5); not a measure of stress. Spearman rank correlation, 1,000-draw bootstrap interval. Observational only.

Data, chart and full method: https://tryhired.co/careers/data/pay-and-pressure/ · CSV: https://tryhired.co/careers/data/pay-and-pressure/pay-and-pressure.csv

Free to reuse with attribution to TryHired and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and O*NET (USDOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0).