As the country has slowly recovered from the Great Recession in recent years, many workers have been forced to take on part-time or temporary work, as full-time options are often more limited. But choosing a part-time job should not mean that workers have to sacrifice their happiness or well-being.
Job database website CareerCast set out to evaluate 200 different part-time and temporary employment opportunities to see which ones are the best bets for American workers. In its annual Jobs Rated Report, released Tuesday, the team at CareerCast used data from the U.S. Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to review jobs on the basis of four "core criteria" relevant to every work experience: environment, stress, income and potential career outlook. Each criterion was divided into subcategories -- for example, the environment category was broken down to account for various emotional and physical factors -- and each subcategory was assigned a numerical ranking.
CareerCast gave one-third of the weighted score to a combination of stress and environment, one-third of the weighted score to income and the final third of the weighted score to potential career outlook, which accounted for such factors as potential for income growth and unemployment rates. These overall rankings were then used to compare each part-time job and determine which options proved most desirable across the board. Part-time employment was defined as anywhere from one to 34 hours of work per week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The report identified several trends. Because many companies still cannot afford to hire a team of information technology professionals on site, part-time computer programmers and network administrators do particularly well financially as they hop from assignment to assignment between businesses. When it comes to seasonal success, accountants experience an incredible spike in demand come tax time, and product delivery workers do particularly well around the holidays.
To see which 10 part-time and temporary jobs made CareerCast's best of the best list for 2015, check out the slideshow below:
