Where our numbers come from

Career matching

What Kind of Work asks about six interest areas: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. They come from John Holland’s theory of career interests, the framework behind O*NET’s Interest Profiler. The questions themselves are written by Your Next Step.

Your answers are compared with O*NET’s interest profile for each job we show, and with the average profile of the jobs in each career field. A field comes out on top when the pattern of your answers looks most like it.

The Story, A Day In The Life and Spend Your 100 are Your Next Step’s own activities. They also point toward career fields, and they count for less than What Kind of Work when the site puts your direction together.

O*NET 31.0 Database, Career Interest Types. National Center for O*NET Development, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. onetcenter.org/database.html

Holland, J. L. (1997). Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources.

This site includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Your Next Step has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Strengths and jobs

In Proof you tag each moment with a strength, like “working out what was wrong” or “getting the pieces to line up”. Your Next Step matches each of the eight strengths to a few of O*NET’s ratings for every job: its skills (such as Troubleshooting or Coordination), its work activities, and, for “actually getting it done”, its work styles (Dependability, Perseverance and Achievement Orientation). Which ratings go with which strength is our judgment.

A job “uses your strength” when it rates higher on that strength than at least 70% of the jobs we track. Your job lists weigh how well a job fits your interests and how much it uses your strengths equally.

O*NET had not yet rated skills and work activities for two of our jobs, so the closest rated job stands in: Paramedics for EMT, and Budget Analysts with Financial Quantitative Analysts for Financial & Investment Analyst.

O*NET 31.0 Database: Transferable Skills, Essential Skills, Work Activities and Work Styles. National Center for O*NET Development, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. onetcenter.org/database.html

Pay

Every pay range is a slice of that job’s published national pay spread. Starting out is the 10th to 25th percentile, where people new to the job usually land. The second figure matches the experience you told us about: the 25th percentile to the median for a few years in, the median to the 75th percentile for experienced, and the 75th to 90th for running things (25th to 75th for jobs that are themselves a management step). If you’re just starting, the second figure shows the few-years-in range, so you can see where the job usually goes. Figures are national and vary by state and employer. None of it is an offer.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, national estimates, May 2025. bls.gov/oes

Data delivered by CareerOneStop, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. careeronestop.org

Training to start

“Usually needs” is the typical education or training a job asks for at entry, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics assigns it. When you tell us how much training you’re up for, jobs that usually need more move lower in your lists, and they stay visible. The same happens when you put “I don’t have the qualifications” or “I haven’t got time to retrain” in the fixed pile in Fixed or Assumed.

Open hours come from your own answers in 168 Hours: the hours you gave learning, plus the hours you left unplanned.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, Table 5.4: Education and training assignments by detailed occupation, 2025. bls.gov/emp

Resume order

In Career ABCs, school and training go first on the resume while you’re in school or within a year of finishing, and below your experience after that. You can switch the order. An unfinished program shows as “Expected” with the month and year.

University of Wisconsin–Madison, Office of Student Success, Resume Writing. oss.wisc.edu/resumes

Coursera, How to List Education on a Resume. coursera.org

Money activities

Retirement account limits are the IRS figures for 2026: $24,500 a year for a 401(k) or 403(b) and $7,500 for an IRA.

Internal Revenue Service, “401(k) limit increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA limit increases to $7,500.” irs.gov

Savings and CD rates are national averages published by the FDIC. Rates change.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Rates and Rate Caps. fdic.gov

Growth examples assume 7% a year, set below the S&P 500’s long-run average of about 10% a year before inflation from 1928 to 2025. It is an assumption: real returns move around, and some years are negative.

Damodaran, A., “Historical Returns on Stocks, Bonds and Bills: 1928–2025,” NYU Stern School of Business. pages.stern.nyu.edu