Is Your Job on 'Sexiest Job' List?

[Diamond Princess]

It isn't money that makes your job sexy in the eyes of others. It's something far more powerful and awe-inspiring.

When Salary.com asked America Online users to name the sexiest jobs, the career that came in No. 1 was firefighters with 16 percent of the vote, beating out the likes of doctors, lawyers, and CEOS. Flight attendants came in second with 13 percent.

A firefighter's wife wrote to Salary.com: "How could you not find it sexy when a person is willing to risk his life for another's; literally walk through fire? You can't put a price tag on that. It is not just a job to them, but a way of life. It is who they are."

Top 10 Sexiest Jobs:
1. Firefighter
2. Flight attendant
3. CEO
4. Reporter
5. Interior designer
6. Event planner
7. Nurse
8. Teacher
9. Doctor
10. Lawyer

Of course, money and power do hold some weight with CEOs, doctors, and lawyers all making the top 10 list, although the latter two came in at the bottom of the heap. Since when is a reporter sexy? Since Sarah Jessica Parker played a newspaper columnist on "Sex and the City," that's when. Salary.com suspects that interior designer made the list thanks to Debra Messing's character Grace Adler on "Will and Grace," as well as the popular home improvement shows "Trading Spaces" and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Whether your job is "sexy" or not, are you satisfied with the work you have done when the day is finished? Only about half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 60 percent in 1995, according to a survey released by The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group, reports the Lafayette (Indiana) Journal and Courier. Of this 50 percent, only 14 percent are "very satisfied" with the work they do, down from 18 percent in 1995. The largest decline in job satisfaction is among workers ages 35 to 44, dropping from 51 percent in 1995 to 49 percent now.

The job satisfaction formula: Michael Gartner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer, once conducted a reporting and writing seminar at The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, where he offered the 80-20 rule. As long as 80 percent of what you do is acceptable, you can probably tolerate the other 20 percent.