Actuary Job Description

In the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the twenty-five best professions to hold in the United States, actuaries continually come out as one of the best jobs. But what is actually in an actuary job description and what are the requirements?

Actuary Job Description

As an actuary, you can work in nearly any field, from finance to government policy, however most will work in insurance. Your main goal in any field is to estimate the financial impacts of risky situations. What you are estimating will depend on the field you work in. Insurance actuaries will use data to estimate the probabilities of death, disability, injury, and property loss. Financial actuaries will use their abilities to estimate the risk of different financial instruments, while actuaries working in the government can be set to work on the impact of an aging population on pensions and benefit plans. The sky is the limit in this amazing field.

The actuary job description consists of a common work week that will be about forty hours long and be mostly behind a desk. For entry-level actuaries the pay ranges between $46,000 and $65,000 a year, although you can earn substantially more depending on the exams that you have passed.

What You Need to Work in the Industry

Any actuary job description requires the applicant to have a strong background in math and statistics. This is because the majority of the day you will be working with data and numbers to establish probabilities. Depending on the field that you choose to enter into, you may also need knowledge of business, financial planning, and human behavior.

Actuaries are in high demand and the outlook for the field remains good as more and more variables are making financial decisions harder for global companies. Does this actuary job description motivate you to start looking for work in the industry? If becoming an actuary sounds like a good career path, but you don’t have the necessary background to get hired, consider enrolling in courses at your local community college or going back to school full time to increase your marketability to future employers.