Table 3. Differences in rankng when hourly and annual earnings of the 20 highest paid full-time(1) occupations are compared, 2005
Occupation Hourly earnings ranking, 2005 Annual earnings ranking, 2005
Hourly earnings ranking Hourly earnings(2) Mean weekly hours Annual earnings ranking Annual earnings(2) Mean annual hours
Mean Relative error(3) Mean Relative error(3)

Airplane pilots and navigators

 1 $97.51 13.0 23.5 3 $119,204 5.5 1222

Economics teachers

 2 66.23 19.2 42.8 7 102,552 12.7 1549

Judges

 3 61.38 11.1 39.8 2 127,028 11.3 2069

Physicians

 4 61.34 11.0 41.9 1 133,717 10.9 2180

Engineering teachers

 5 60.62 10.6 41.2 9 97,222 7.1 1604

Agriculture and forestry teachers

 6 55.12 23.5 34.6 17 74,201 18.0 1346

Law teachers

 7 55.10 15.3 38.9 12 86,541 14.9 1571

Physics teachers

 8 53.20 8.5 38.7 14 79,233 7.1 1489

Earth, environmental, and marine science teachers

 9 52.72 13.5 39.6 13 80,815 10.2 1533

Chief executives and general administrators, public administration

 10 52.11 6.3 42.8 4 116,096 16.9 2228

Medical science teachers

 11 51.79 10.2 45.7 5 112,026 6.4 2163

Lawyers

 12 50.89 4.9 41.5 6 109,747 6.1 2157

Sociology teachers

 13 49.58 15.6 39.1 15 78,728 15.1 1588

Dentists

 14 46.30 11.0 41.3 8 99,547 5.6 2150

Business, commerce, and marketing teachers

 15 46.19 13.0 38.9 19 70,841 12.6 1534

English teachers

 16 45.89 11.0 37.8 20 69,752 10.3 1520

Managers, marketing, advertising, and public relations

 17 45.33 4.2 41.2 10 97,050 4.2 2141

Pharmacists

 18 45.25 1.1 39.7 11 93,515 1.2 2067

Social science teachers, n.e.c.

 19 44.68 5.9 39.7 18 72,280 6.0 1618

Biological science teachers

 20 44.49 10.5 40.6 16 78,372 11.6 1761

Footnotes:
(1) Employees are classified as working either a full-time or a part-time schedule based on the definition used by each establishment.
(2) Earnings are the straight-time hourly wages or salaries paid to employees. They include incentive pay, cost-of-living adjustments, and hazard pay. Excluded are premium pay for overtime, vacations, holidays, nonproduction bonuses, and tips. The mean is computed by totaling the pay of all workers and dividing by the number of workers, weighted by hours.
(3) The relative standard error (RSE) is the standard error expressed as a percent of the estimate. It can be used to calculate a "confidence interval" around a sample estimate. For more information about RSEs, see National Compensation Survey: Occupational Wages in the United States, June 2005, Bulletin 2581 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2006), Appendix A, "Technical Note," pp. 154–55.

NOTE: n.e.c. = not elsewhere classified