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Veterinarian's assistant
- Median pay: $25,500
- % who say their job is stressful: 72.6%
Lori Asprea is a licensed veterinary technician at New York's Animal Medical Center, the largest facility of its kind in the world.
The animal hospital often gets the hardest cases, the ones regular vets can't handle.
"We see a lot of very ill animals and many are here a long time," said Asprea. "Emotionally, you get very attached."
And with a national median salary of under $26,000, the financial toll can be just as steep.
But helping animals makes up a lot of the difference. "I love all my patients," said Asprea.
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 top 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." They were then ranked in order of pay, lowest to highest. Only jobs with median pay less than $50,000 were eligible., and only one job per "job family" was included. PayScale conducted the survey between August 2010 and August 2012.
- Last updated March 07 2013 08:59 AM ET
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