Loan processor
- Median pay: $49,352
- % who say their job is stressful: 91%
Loan processors are constantly being asked for status updates on applications for mortgages, auto loans and other lending products. And they get it from both sides: the applicants and the loan officers.
"When you give them the status they will email and call repeatedly for more updates, sometimes literally every hour if what you gave them was not what they wanted to hear," wrote one loan processor from Oceanside, Calif., in response to a query posted by the National Association of Loan Processors on behalf of CNNMoney.
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A big challenge these days is to make sure all the new consumer protection regulations are being observed, said Sam Verma, a vice president of Peoples Privo Processing.
"Keeping up with all the new regulations is so stressful," she said. "You have to have everything correct or the loan can be denied."
In hot housing markets, like Austin, if the loan doesn't get approved quickly, it can kill the deal.
"If you don't meet your closing date, the sellers can cancel the contract and sell the home to somebody else," said Verma.
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.
