How the Best Careers 2009 Were Selected

A career is too nuanced to be judged purely on statistics, so we use both quantitative and qualitative criteria to select U.S. News's Best Careers. From the hundreds of careers and variants in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, plus other candidate careers, we selected the 31 that offered outstanding opportunities based on:

Job satisfaction, defined as spending a high percentage of time on activities that many people would consider rewarding and/or pleasant.

Training difficulty, defined by the length of training typically required, adjusted by the amount of science and/or math involved.

Prestige, based on an informal survey of college-educated adults.

Job market outlook, based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor and professional organizations. Because even its current data can be a year or two old, we adjust that in light of recent major trends. For example, this year, a career's job market rating was increased if it is in one of the new president's priority areas: healthcare, energy, the environment, education, infrastructure, or re-regulation.

Pay, with data provided by payscale.com, which has an extensive database of individual employee compensation profiles. Pay assumes an average scope of responsibility and that you're employed by someone else. Self-employed individuals and those with above-average scopes of responsibility can earn significantly more.