Jobs With the Highest—And Lowest—Divorce Rates, Ranked

Your work life could be making a major impact on your personal life, even if you try to keep the two separate.

Divorce isn’t uncommon in the United States. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that one-third of Americans who have ever been married have reported their first marriage ended in divorce. And while the divorce rate has been going down in recent years, 14.4 marriages out of 1,000 still end in divorce.

Those numbers can fluctuate based on a variety of factors, and what you do for a living could be one of them. Before you get married, you may want to check out these jobs to see if you—or your future spouse—could be more likely headed for a divorce based on the professions you’ve chosen, based on data from Flowing Data, as cited by Visual Capitalist.

Divorce Rates of Jobs | Visual Capitalist/Voronoi

Professions With the Lowest Divorce Rates

Rank	Profession	Divorce Rate
1	Actuaries	14.2%
2	Physical Scientists	17.2%
3	IT Scientists	18.7%
4	Software Developers	18.9%
5	Physical Therapists	19.0%

Actuaries analyze the economic costs and risks of different events. They’re often employed by insurance companies to make mathematical assessments for things like when people will die or how likely a house will get damaged by weather. So could it be normal for actuaries to also assess the risks of marrying the wrong person? Maybe! They are the least likely profession to get divorced, after all.

STEM-based positions make up the rest of the top five jobs that are the least likely to see divorces among their ranks. Health science-based jobs like physical scientists and physical therapists see lower rates, while IT scientists and software developers also have relatively low rates of divorce.

Professions With the Highest Divorce Rates

Rank	Profession	Divorce Rate
1	Healthcare Practitioners	48.3%
2	Telemarketers	48.0%
3	Massage Therapists	47.9%
4	Bus Drivers	47.8%
5	Press Machine Operators	47.6%

Healthcare positions are at both extremes when it comes to divorce rates.

Healthcare practitioners have the highest rate of divorce, with almost 50% of those workers facing the major life event. That’s a big contrast from some medical professions like pharmacists, surgeons, and optometrists, who make the top 20 list of jobs with the lowest rates of divorce. One difference could be that other healthcare practitioners might have lower-paying positions with odd hours, which could put a strain on relationships.

Telemarketers come on second place, with a divorce rate at 48%. Telemarketers have a stressful job with unusual hours, and they face pretty regular rejection from callers, which can conflate problems with their personal lives.

How Jobs Can Impact These Rates

Some jobs may be more likely to cause divorces than others simply because of the characteristics of what they’re responsible for.

One of the biggest issues that causes couples to divorce is a lack of commitment, with spouses emotionally detaching from a relationship. One way that could happen is if one or both spouses work odd or long hours, making it harder for them to connect on a day-to-day basis. Jobs like healthcare practitioners, telemarketers, or press machine operators might not have typical hours, potentially putting a strain on relationships.

Financial problems could also cause rifts in relationships, which may be why better-paying jobs make the list of lowest divorce rates. An actuary, for example, makes a median income of more than $125,000 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, while software developers make more than $131,000 in median income. On the other hand, telemarketers make $34,480 in median income, which could cause increased financial strain.