What Is Your Opposite Job?

business, humor, lessons learned, Teaching and Education 1 Minute

The New York Times created an online app that uses data from the Labor Department to determine what the polar opposite of a given job is.

For example, here are some polar opposites:

  • kindergarten teacher and physicist
  • news editor and model
  • chief executive and agricultural grader
  • writer/author and mobile home installer

The Labor Department keeps detailed records on the skills and tasks required for each job. Some of those skills are physical: trunk strength, speed of limb movement, the ability to stay upright. Other skills are more knowledge-based: economics and accounting, physics, programming. Together, they capture the essence of what makes a job distinctive.

It is this set of skills that helps determine job opposites.

Of course, I had to try it for myself. I did not see accounting teacher as a choice, so I first chose accountant/auditor and the opposite was agricultrual grader, just like the CEO above. I then tried college teacher, but I did not find that either, so I chose Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School, and the opposite was once again agricultural grader. So that makes it pretty easy to guess what would happen if I combine accountant and teacher; the opposite would be agricultural grader.

So I was curious what skills an agricultural grader requires, since apparenelty I don’t have them. The app gives a list of such skills:

  • Trunk strength
  • Handling and moving objects
  • Manual dexterity
  • Foreign language
  • Public safety and security
  • Static strength
  • Arm-hand steadiness
  • Controlling machines and processes
  • Finger dexterity
  • Production and processing

So apparently I am weak, uncoordinated, can’t handle machinery, and I don’t speak a foreign language.

This app is eerily accurate…

Here’s the link if you want to try it; not sure if it requires a subscription, but it seemed to work without my being logged in.

*image from Profile Center

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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33 thoughts on “What Is Your Opposite Job?”

    1. the article did note that “The most distinctive jobs in the American work force are model and physicist, at least according to the data; they’re the two opposite jobs that appear most frequently on our list.”

      so I guess you are not alone in having model as your opposite 🙂

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  2. This reminds me of those dumb quizzes I used to encounter when I was on Facebook. I don’t believe it. I think you’d make an excellent agricultural grader. First, you get a crop of new students every semester. And second, you grade them at the end of each semester.

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