Actuaries have the top-rated job in America, which gives I.I.I. chief actuary James Lynch a chance to crow.
Actuaries – the number crunchers of the insurance industry – have the best jobs in the United States, according to the latest annual analysis by CareerCast.com. Newspaper reporters have the worst.
This has a personal resonance, because I am an actuary and I used to be a newspaper reporter. I wrote personal finance stories for the Miami Herald in the late 1980s. Before that I was a general assignment reporter for the Washington Missourian.
I think I’m the only person who can make this claim, and the fact continually sparks conversations, the most recent being April 14 after I spoke at the AIPSO Residual Market Forum in Warwick, Rhode Island. This time the questioner was Karen Furtado, a partner at Strategy Meets Action, a Boston consultant to insurers. She asked: “That’s such an interesting change of careers. How did that happen?”
My response is a practiced tale:
I worked nearly a decade in journalism and had many reasons for leaving. You have to have lots of reasons to change careers. If there’s only one thing wrong with your job, that’s a good job and you shouldn’t leave it.
Before I left, I made some lists, as career guides urge. One list was of the things I wanted to do but never found time to do, because of the constraints of my career. One item on the list was “Take Math Classes.” (I had always gotten good math grades.)
So I quit my job and enrolled at Florida International University, near where I lived then. This was about three months before my wedding. I was 29.
At first I wanted to become a computer programmer because I had enjoyed writing the code that generated charts in the newspaper.
I quickly learned that programming is an art governed by a muse, and much of a programmer’s job is to stare at a screen until the muse whispers the correct code to write. This muse might alight in an hour, or in a week or maybe three weeks. In the meantime you faced a blinking cursor and ate Snickers.
That was not the career for me.
I had loved my math classes, though, and decided to change my major. I walked into the math department offices, and – serendipity! – the admin handed me a brand new brochure touting the university’s brand new certificate program in actuarial science.
You need to be curious about a lot of subjects: mathematics, statistics, economics, law. You need to be able to explain complex ideas in a simple way. Actuaries surely need those skills – but reporters need them, too.
This I can do, I thought. I got the university’s first certificate in actuarial science and picked up a bachelor’s in statistics along the way. After a mere decade of brutal exams, I was a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS).
My I.I.I. job combines my two careers. I work closely with the CAS, for which I write press releases and the occasional article. And I write research papers for the I.I.I., like this one on alternative capital, or the occasional magazine article, like this one on autonomous vehicles.
In fairness, I’ve never thought newspaper reporter was the worst job in the world, even back when I was so disenchanted a quarter century ago. Much of its poor rating today comes from future of newspapers, more bleak today than when I worked for one.
And the job that one person hates another may love. The journalist who can barely add (I’ve met them) would be an unhappy actuary, as would the actuary who struggles to write.
I feel lucky to have a job that blends my unique skills, and I always hope that others can find their own way as well.
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