The most common job in Arizona is... (2015, insurance)

[Arizona Mike]

Interesting NPR article, based on census stats.

Until recently, the most common job was truck driver in our state. But in 2014, it became Customer Service Rep / Investigator-Adjustor (except insurance).

The article shows the most common jobs for each state: Map: The Most Common* Job In Every State : Planet Money : NPR

Some are kind of surprising - in New York, it's "nursing aide."

[PhoenixSomeday]

Truck Driver!?!? How is retail not the most common job in every single state? I guess it depends on if they consider it a job, and what exactly would/does qualify as retail.

[Bruce Jackpot]

Arizona: I'd guess retail and call center!!!

[jmw51882]

A lot of the changes over the years would be caused by society in general rather than jobs themselves. For example, in the 70's through mid eighties, there was a large number of states with "secretary" as the top spot. Today, that would not be politically correct and the same job would be classified as customer service rep or administrative assistant.

Additionally, I agree that in most places the number one job would be retail. This is because in many areas, Walmart is the number one employer. However, because most of these positions are part time and/or seasonal, many employees may identify themselves with another job, whether it be full time or simply more prestigious.

[jmw51882]

Originally Posted by Bruce Jackpot

Arizona: I'd guess retail and call center!!!

Both of these may be called customer service reps.

[PHX Newbie]

You are right that the most common jobs are in retail. If you look at the website right above the map, you will see:
*We used data from the Census Bureau, which has two catch-all categories: "managers not elsewhere classified" and "salespersons not elsewhere classified." Because those categories are broad and vague to the point of meaninglessness, we excluded them from our map.
So, they took the two largest categories and just discarded them because they were hard to drill down into. The whole map would probably show "salespersons" as the most common job. In truth, the map title should be - The third most common job in each state is....