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5 blue collar jobs that pay $100,000 a year

By Quentin Fottrell

Published: Jan 10, 2015 9:15 a.m. ET

 

You don’t need to wear a suit and tie to work to make six figures. Though it may require self-employment, the support of a labor union and, in some cases, not a small amount of risk to your safety, you can earn over $100,000 at a traditionally blue collar job.

 

“There are several occupations that have that potential,” says Carl Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of Rutgers John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. “A lot of them are in the trades.” As third-level students leave college saddled with debt, others are looking for alternative ways to earn $100,000 or more a year. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a 24-year-old welder who earns $140,000 a year and attended Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas.

 

New York Police Department salaries can go as high as $131,000 a year, depending on the rank and tenure, according to information confidentially submitted to careers website Glassdoor by NYPD employees. A police officer’s salary ranges from $50,000 to $116,000, while a sergeant’s salary can run from $105,000 to $131,000, excluding overtime. “These income levels for police vary by region,” Van Horn says. “A person who is doing police work at Port Authority is very different from a police officer in the rural community.” In 2013, some 20 NYPD employees brought in over $50,000 in overtime. As the recent killings of police officers in New York has shown, they often face life-or-death situations every day.

 

Bartenders

 

A six-figure salary for bartenders is not common -- the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median salary at $18,900 a year -- but bartenders in upmarket bars in major cities like New York and L.A. can make hundreds of dollars a night in tips. Most bartenders take home between $45,000 and $73,000, including tips, according to Rob Doherty, author of “Highball: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Professional Bartender.” “It’s possible for a bartender to find just the right situation to rake in the much sought after $100,000,” he writes. The best bartenders remember everything there is to know about their customers, often share opinions on issues of the day and never forget their names.

 

Contractors and construction managers

 

All those fixer-uppers add up. The national average for contractor salaries is $65,239, according to Glassdoor, but can vary from $32,000 to $110,000, depending on the scale of the work. “It’s a field that’s so broad, from large construction companies to one-man operations,” Van Horn says. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that pay for construction managers can range from $82,790 to $144,520. Although a bachelor’s degree may not be required, rigorous training, substantial experience and/or formal certification/licensing may be necessary, says Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at CohnReznick, an accounting and advisory firm. More than half (57%) of construction managers were self-employed in 2012, the BLS found. But it’s demanding: “The need to meet deadlines and to respond to delays and emergencies often requires long hours. Many managers also may be on call 24 hours a day.”

 

Farmers and ranchers

 

“Farmers in the Midwest and up and down the east and west coasts can bring home six figures,” says Scott Dobroski, career trends analyst at careers website Glassdoor. They work in industries where their products never go out of fashion. “After all, everyone in America drinks orange juice,” he says, although the price of oranges and orange juice can be volatile. While the median annual wage for farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers is $70,110 a year, it can rise to $119,530 a year, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California farmers have the highest annual mean wage of all states in this industry ($93,630 a year versus $75,960 a year in Florida), the BLS says. California’s most valued commodities in 2012 included milk ($6.9 billion in revenue a year), grapes ($4.5 billion a year) and almonds ($4.4 billion a year), according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

 

Oil rig workers

 

While most geologists, engineers and drilling consultants have a bachelor’s degree, there are some oil rig jobs that don’t require one. Oil rig foremen/superintendents, directional drillers and oil rig managers are among jobs that don’t typically require a bachelor’s degree and can command six figure salaries or close to, according to a report by RigZone, a jobs site for the industry -- but they often require years of experience and oil and gas worker salaries fell 3% in 2013 for the second consecutive year. Working on a rig can be lonely, laborious and dangerous, but salaries have been rising in recent years, he adds. North Dakota had the highest fatality rate in the country in 2012 (17.7 per 100,000 workers) followed by Wyoming (12.2), Alaska (8.9) and Montana (7.3), according to a report by AFLCIO, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.