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New data has revealed the roles that pay the highest wages – and don’t always require a formal education.
Job site Adzuna has listed the jobs that don’t need a university education and pay more than the average UK annual salary of £33,000.
Some of the roles listed pay over £90,000 a year, and for many positions “knowledge and skills are far more important than formal education”, according to Andrew Hunter, the co-founder of Adzuna.
The job with the highest annual salary which pays workers up to £90,000 a year is the role of a Casino Gaming Manager.
Hunter adds “A university degree is no longer the only ticket to a high-paying career, as more industries look to expand their talent pools to a more diverse range of applicants and offer on-the-job training.
“The IT sector is a good example of this, boasting many high paying roles like scrum master, ethical hacker, and software developer open to jobseekers without a computer science qualification.”
Other high-paid jobs that do not require a degree include, commercial pilots, ethical hackers, and air traffic controllers – all of which can command an annual salary of £60,000. If you are keen to become a commercial pilot, you’ll usually need to show evidence of passing five GCSEs including English, Science, and Maths.
Many people entering the job market are keen to avoid a university education – which costs up to £57,000 on average – and are choosing to pursue one of the high-paying careers that avoid taking on student loan debts and studying costs.
The following roles that do not require a university degree can command salaries between £50,000 and £60,000 a year:
- Software developer
- Train driver
- Construction manager
- Oil Rig operative
- Security manager
- Games developer
- Project manager
Eight other jobs pay workers without a formal education salaries between £43,000 and £46,000 a year:
- Buying manager
- Translator
- Accountant
- Private chef
- Army officer
- Digital marketing manager
- Landscape designer
- ChatGPT prompt engineer
The average wage in the UK in the last tax year was around £33,000, with the national living wage in the UK rising to £10.42 next month. That works out as an annual salary of just over £19,600 for full-time workers.
