If danger beyond the daily commute is not appealing to you, consider a career in business, and the ancillary industries around business.
The financial sector, information technology and professional services ranked among the safest, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on work days missed due to injury or illness. 0.1% of investment services professionals, 0.2% of patent and trademark leasing as well as information services professionals and 0.3% percent of professional services employees missed time due to physical harm in 2014.
Indeed, of the factors weighed in our annual Jobs Rated report, environment encompasses danger such as hazards personally faced, perils faced by others working alongside, working conditions like toxicity and physical demands. The top-ranked jobs by environment include several within the business world: actuary, human resources manager and executive assistant.
Other careers that cross over into other industries but still have a connection to business, like statistician and technical writer, also rank as some of the best for environment.
Jobs in academia also offer safe environments. Historians and mathematicians enjoy two of the top seven best rankings in that category in the 2015 Jobs Rated report.
Of course, workplace safety for jobs in corporate or academic environments probably doesn’t come as much of a shock. These aren’t careers that require employees to go into remote areas, like a logger. An IT professional isn’t running into a burning building, such as is required of firefighters.
However, hospital workers are surrounded by illness and injury every single work day, and BLS data finds that with a 0.3% fatal injury rate, hospitals actually had the single lowest fatality rate of any particular workplace, tied with finance and insurance offices, where workers such as accountants and actuaries spend their time.
Hospital jobs have an environment somewhat more akin to an office than the high-stress situations doctors, nurses and EMTs face. They are among some of the safest available.
Below are the 10 safest jobs, weighing factors from our Jobs Rated report methodology.
1. Accountant
The danger of working as an accountant is of a much different nature than the risks inherent with our most dangerous jobs of 2015. Typically, the greatest hazard an accountant faces on-the-job comes in the form of an audit.