Ranging from $27.99/hour to $106.50/hour, there are many middle-skill jobs in the Central Valley/Mother Lode region that require less than a bachelor’s degree but still pay well.

The findings are included in the Central Valley/Mother Lode Center of Excellence’s (COE’s) annual “2023 Central Valley/Mother Lode Region: Overview,” a report that highlights labor market trends in 10 sectors critical to the local economy.

Here are the top-paying occupations with the highest median earnings in each sector:

• Advanced manufacturing–Industrial production managers, $49.75/hour
• Advanced transportation and logistics–Airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers, $106.50/hour
• Agriculture, water, and environmental technologies–Cost estimators, $34.94/hour
• Business and entrepreneurship–General and operations managers, $44.07/hour
• Education–Special education teachers, preschool, $34.96
• Energy, construction, and utilities–First-line supervisors of construction trades and extracting workers, $35.65/hour
• Health–Registered nurses, $54.27/hour
• ICT/digital media–Network and computer systems administrators, $40.67/hour
• Public safety–First-line supervisors of correctional officers, $51.21/hour
• Retail, hospitality, and tourism–First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers, $27.99/hour

The report also identifies middle-skill occupations in each sector with the greatest number of annual job openings and includes demographic analysis of the workforce composition of each sector, in terms of gender, age, and race/ethnicity.