Daycare director
- Median pay: $32,685
- % who say their job is stressful: 83.3%
What's the most stressful aspect of running a daycare center? The parents, says Erika Jackson, who worked at the job for 10 years.
It's stressful enough just making sure the kids are safe, happy and learning. "[The parents] forget that there are other children in the room," said Jackson, who is now an administrator for the National Early Childhood Program Accreditation in Washington, D.C. "They want their children to have special attention, special accommodation."
Related: How much do you need to earn to be happy?
Daycare directors manage staffs, oversee activities and prepare budgets.
Yet despite all of that responsibility, the pay is often low with a median salary of around $33,000.
"It's just like teachers," said Jackson. "We should get more money."
Methodology: Starting from a database of more than 9,000 jobs, PayScale used data from over 120,000 respondents who rated their jobs for quality of life factors. The 15 were selected based on the national median pay for workers with at least five or seven years' experience and the percent of workers surveyed who said their jobs were "fairly stressful" or "extremely stressful." Only one job per "job family" was included. PayScale conducted the survey between August 2011 and August 2013.
