Another great interactive from Flowing Data allows users to see top jobs and salaries by state (and for the entire U.S. of A. also). This static chart that I copied from the site displays job and salary information for the U.S. The green areas in the chart are jobs where the Median Annual Salary is $60,000 or more.

What’s cool is that you can set the Median Annual Salary slider (see above) to a certain Median Salary level and you will see what job categories have most of those jobs. Also the area covered by the specific job provides a sense of how many jobs are in your state in that field. When you slide your mouse over the actual interactive, you will see the median salary for that job as well as the number of jobs with that classification. The screenshot above is for the entire United States but users have the ability to select their individual state under Place of Interest.

Here are some questions for your students:

• What are three jobs that you are interested in learning more about?
• Are they all in the same job category?
• Find out the median pay and number of people in that role in YOUR STATE. Did any of this information surprise you?
• Go to the Median Annual Salary slider and move it to the right toward higher Median Annual Salary. Which job category (ies) seem to have the higher paying jobs?
• What are common attributes about these jobs that make them high paying?
• What are the 4-5 most common jobs in your state? How would you describe those roles?

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.