The best jobs in the U.S. right now

It’s no secret we’re in the midst of a brutal job market. On average, people are spending more time searching for a new job than years past, and AI is upending the job search — as candidates and recruiters both use it often to their own peril. Plus, with AI swallowing up jobs and stoking fears of mass unemployment, people are looking to safeguard their careers, finding jobs that can’t be replaced by a computer.

The career platform Indeed set out to find the best jobs in the U.S. for 2026. It said its researchers “scored thousands of occupations on Indeed across pay, demand, growth, and flexibility, weighting compensation most heavily and giving equal weight to indicators of current and future opportunity.”

The highest-ranked professions are examples of “where strong wages intersect with sustained hiring needs,” Indeed explained.

And the list points to some interesting trends. “The labor market overall has been in this low-hire, stagnant space for the last year,” says Laura Ullrich, the North America research director for Indeed’s Hiring Lab. “One major exception is healthcare. Only 11% of total jobs are in healthcare, but it represents 72% of the job growth.”

Continue reading to see which made the top 7 and why.