10 Jobs With the Highest Divorce Rates, According to Census Data

Some jobs are just harder on a marriage than others

Long shifts. Weekend and holiday schedules. Weeks away from home. Constant contact with strangers instead of a spouse. Those aren't abstract complaints — according to an analysis of five years of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data, they line up almost perfectly with the occupations that report the highest divorce rates in the country.

Statistician Nathan Yau ran the numbers for FlowingData, calculating what share of people who had ever been married in each occupation were currently divorced. The pattern that emerged wasn't about prestige or education — some of the highest-earning jobs in America (physicians, software developers) land among the most stable marriages, while several solidly middle-income jobs land among the least. Below are the 10 occupations with the highest reported divorce rates, what they actually pay according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2024, and why researchers think schedule and stability — not income alone — explain so much of the gap.

How these jobs were ranked

The divorce-rate figures below come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, as calculated by Yau and independently republished by outlets including Entrepreneur and 24/7 Wall St. The rate reflects the percentage of people in each occupation, among those who have ever married, who are currently divorced — not the odds that any one marriage will end, but a useful signal of which careers correlate with relationship strain. Salary figures are pulled separately, from the current BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, using May 2024 data (the most recent available).

The 10 jobs with the highest divorce rates at a glance

Here's the full list before we get into why each one lands where it does. Divorce rates are Yau's ACS calculations; pay is BLS May 2024. One note on the last column: BLS reports dancers and choreographers hourly rather than annually, because the work is irregular by nature — which is itself part of the story.

Read down the middle column and the rates barely move — six points separate first from tenth. Read down the right one and the pay nearly triples. Whatever is driving these numbers, it isn't the size of the paycheck.

1. Bartenders — 52.7%

Median pay: $33,530/year (BLS)

Late nights, weekend and holiday shifts, and a job that puts you in close contact with other people's social lives while your own partner is asleep or waiting up — bartending checks nearly every box researchers associate with relationship strain. One compiled account from people whose spouses worked in restaurants and bars put it bluntly: "They work every day, often 12-15 hours, every holiday and weekend. The term 'restaurant widow' is a real thing." If you're pricing out the field anyway, JobSnag's food service and hospitality listings show current openings and pay ranges.

2. Flight Attendants — 50.5%

Median pay: $67,130/year (BLS)

Flight attendants post one of the highest divorce rates despite solidly middle-class pay — a sign that income isn't the deciding factor. Days away from home, overnight layovers, and jet lag pile up fast. "They work away from home for days or weeks, jetlag messes with your body, dealing with unruly passengers with a smile," one spouse wrote in the same compiled account. "Also, cheating is through the roof" — less a statistic than a reflection of how much unsupervised time apart the job involves.

3. Gaming Services Workers (Casino Dealers) — 50.3%

Median pay: $35,630/year (BLS)

Casino floors run 24 hours a day, which means dealers and other gaming services workers routinely draw overnight and rotating shifts that don't match a typical household's schedule. Combined with modest pay for the hours worked, it's a job that's structurally hard to build a stable routine around.

4. Switchboard Operators — 49.7%

Median pay: $36,750/year (BLS OES)

A shrinking occupation, but one that historically ran on shift work — someone has to be at the switchboard around the clock. Lower pay combined with irregular hours is a recurring theme among nearly every job on this list.

5. Telemarketers — 49.2%

Median pay: $36,340/year (BLS OEWS)

Telemarketing combines two stressors researchers flag repeatedly: below-average pay and a job that involves absorbing rejection from strangers all day. Neither is a direct cause of divorce, but both are the kind of chronic, low-grade stress that studies link to relationship strain over time.

6. Massage Therapists — 47.8%

Median pay: $57,950/year (BLS)

Many massage therapists are self-employed or work irregular, client-driven hours across evenings and weekends — again, a schedule mismatch with a partner working a standard 9-to-5. It's also a field where a lot of people piece together work across several employers, closer to the per diem model than to a salaried job. JobSnag's personal and community care listings show what's currently open.

7. Licensed Practical & Licensed Vocational Nurses — 47.0%

Median pay: $62,340/year (BLS)

Nursing pays reasonably well, but 12-hour shifts, overnight rotations, and the emotional weight of patient care take a toll that doesn't stay at work. "They're drained and burnt out, so you get the brunt of their anger and frustration — and also no compassion, because they're all out of that when they come home," one partner of a nurse wrote. If the schedule flexibility of nursing interests you regardless, JobSnag's nursing job listings include a range of shift types and settings.

8. First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers — 46.9%

Median pay: $59,900/year (BLS OEWS)

Corrections work runs around the clock, in a high-stress environment, with rotating shifts that are difficult to plan a family life around — a combination that shows up again and again among the occupations with elevated divorce rates.

9. Dancers and Choreographers — 46.8%

Median pay: $24.53/hour (BLS)

Performance-based work often means touring, evening and weekend rehearsals or shows, and inconsistent income between engagements — a version of the same instability that shows up in several other entries on this list, just in a creative-industry package.

10. Police, Fire, and Ambulance Dispatchers — 46.6%

Median pay: $50,730/year (BLS)

Dispatchers work 24/7 emergency lines, often in rotating or overnight shifts, absorbing the stress of other people's worst moments in real time. It's essential work — and also one of the more emotionally taxing shift-work jobs there is.

It's not really about the paycheck

The instinct is to assume low pay drives the divorce numbers. It's more complicated than that. Legal scholars Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, whose research the Institute for Family Studies has cited on this exact question, argue that it isn't low income by itself that erodes marriages — it's instability. A couple can build a life around a modest but predictable income. It's much harder to build one around a job where the hours, the schedule, or the paycheck itself changes week to week.

That framing fits this list well. Bartenders, dealers, dancers, and telemarketers don't just earn less than average — they also work hours that shift constantly and rarely match a partner's schedule. Flight attendants and nurses earn solidly middle-class wages, yet still show up near the top, because the instability in their case is about time and energy, not money. Across the board, IFS's own review of the data found divorce rates run at 48.8% or higher in the highest-risk occupations, versus under 22% in the most stable ones — a gap too large to explain by income alone.

It's worth separating this from simple job stress, too. Schedule instability and dissatisfaction at work are related but distinct problems — the most common causes of job dissatisfaction skew toward pay, management, and lack of advancement, none of which track neatly onto this list. Physical risk is its own separate axis again: the most dangerous jobs in America are mostly logging, roofing, and commercial fishing, and almost none of them appear here.

The other end of the list

For contrast, the jobs with the lowest reported divorce rates in the same Census analysis include actuaries (17%), physical scientists (18.9%), medical and life scientists (19.6%), clergy (19.8%), and software developers (20.3%). Several of these are well-paid, but what they mostly share is predictability: standard hours, stable employment, and — for clergy in particular — a career built around a stable institution and community rather than shift work.

The takeaway

None of this means a bartending job or a nursing career dooms a relationship — plenty of people in every occupation on this list build lasting marriages. But the pattern is a useful gut check for anyone weighing a career change: a schedule that's constantly in flux, or a paycheck that never quite settles, puts a real, measurable strain on a partnership over time, independent of how much the job pays.

The practical version of that is simple enough. When you're comparing two offers, the shift pattern deserves as much weight as the salary line — and it's the one most people forget to ask about.